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8.0 Identification and Screening of Potential Water Conservation <br />Measures and Programs <br />This section will look at the universe of measures and programs that have relevance to <br />the City, including all the categories that are required under CRS 37 -60 -126. The City has <br />ongoing water conservation measures and programs that will be included in the <br />evaluation. Section 4 contains a listing of these ongoing activities. <br />It is important to understand the meaning of measures and programs within the <br />framework of the City's water conservation plan. Based on the prevailing literature2, <br />measures include both hardware devices and practices that actually reduce demand, <br />whereas programs are strategic combinations of activities and measures (e.g., education <br />and incentives with measures) that will bring about reduced water use demands. To this <br />point, hardware measures are typically more reliable in achieving long -term water <br />savings because they typically need to be installed only once and require no ongoing <br />effort to maintain water savings. In contrast, educating water users to adopt low- water- <br />use or native landscaping and irrigation practices can require considerable time and <br />ongoing reminders are needed if water - efficient landscape and irrigation practices are to <br />be maintained. The best water conservation programs link hardware installations with <br />practices that support behavioral changes such that end user water demands are <br />measurably reduced to levels that can be maintained and sustained. This is exactly the <br />approach that the City plans to implement. <br />The water conservation measures and programs are focused on those activities that will <br />occur over the next ten years, or until 2017. Any planning horizon beyond this time <br />period, albeit valuable for long range and strategic planning, is wrought with <br />extrapolations and estimates that do not necessarily support the short and midrange <br />planning that is needed to develop the tactics which must be included in the water <br />conservation plan. Therefore, the identification and selection of water conservation <br />measures and programs will limit its efforts chiefly on an evaluation of the activities <br />planned for the next ten years. <br />8.1 Initial Screening of Measures and Programs <br />Focusing this plan on defining the future water conservation activities that will be <br />implemented within the next ten year period serves two key functions for the City: <br />• It allows the City to collect information that the City currently lacks regarding <br />customer water use and develop specific measures and programs to address customer <br />water conservation needs to improve their water use efficiency; and <br />2 Water Use and Conservation Am y Vicker, 2001 <br />36 <br />