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5.0 Forecasting Future Water Demands <br />The Section provides an overview of the demand forecasting that was developed to <br />estimate future water use by the City and its customers, as a means to determine the <br />needs and the effectiveness of proposed water conservation measures and programs <br />discussed in later sections. Future water use forecasts were developed to estimate total <br />annual water use and peak daily and monthly treated water demands for the City and all <br />its customers. Annual treated water demand is used to evaluate the availability of water <br />within the City's water rights portfolio, whereas peak daily and monthly treated water <br />demand is used to evaluate current and future water treatment and delivery capacity. A <br />detailed description of the forecasting methods and relevant data are provided in <br />Appendix B. <br />Note that the forecasted annual water demand will focus on treated water given the lack <br />of available information regarding past and current raw water use. Future water <br />conservation activities will likely be selected to include full metering of raw water use by <br />the City's facilities; including schools, parks, parkways and golf courses. Until such time <br />as the raw water characterization can occur, only an estimate of the total raw water use, as <br />presented in Table 2, can be made. Therefore,, total water demand will be estimated from <br />the sum of the treated water demand and the current raw water demand, which is <br />estimated to be about 1,450 AF assuming that ongoing water conservation activities are <br />maintained. <br />Forecasting water demand is a critical part of the water conservation planning process, <br />and is usually done as part of a raw water or treated water master planning effort. The <br />City has recently completed both these master planning efforts: the Treated Water Master <br />Plan was completed in 2000 and the Raze Water Master Plan (RWMP) was updated in 2004. <br />Any demand forecasting conducted for this effort will need to be corroborated with these <br />other master planning efforts either now or at some time in the future. <br />One means to corroborate the water conservation forecasting with these other master <br />planning efforts is to utilize the same population growth projects, since future water <br />demand will be tied to some extent on expected future population. The most recent <br />population projections were obtained from the RWMP and confirmed by the Planning <br />Department. The RWMP also forecasted treated water demands until buildout. Since the <br />most recent water use patterns were evaluated as part of this water conservation plan <br />update, the forecasting results were compared to those from the 2004 RWMP and are <br />discussed below. <br />The potential effects of new water conservation efforts that may be selected during this <br />planning process have not been included in the demand forecasts in this section, rather <br />are discussed later in Section 8.0 Integrate Resources and Modify Forecasts. The <br />forecasts in this section are based on recent patterns of water demands that would reflect <br />ongoing water conservation efforts and "passive conservation" as older appliances and <br />23 <br />