Aspen 1997 WCPlan - Laserfiche WebLink

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b) Low Water Use Landscapes and Efficient Irrigation-- The City provides a financial incentive for the use of water efficient landscapes in the. assessment of tap fees and for calculating water demand charges. For instance, a new irrigation system using overhead sprinklers covering a 3,000 square foot area would be charged $2,4181 in tap fees. The same system using drip irrigation would not be assessed any tap fees and would pay significantly lower demand charges. The same principles apply to systems using,a combination of spray and drip systems, maintaining a financial incentive. c) Water Efficient Industrial and Commercial Processes-- The City provides water for use in snowmaking at Aspen Mountain under contract to the Aspen Skiing Company. It also conveys untreated water from Maroon Creek through City facilities for use at Aspen Highlands. Water demand from snowmaking operations is highly variable and can represent a significant portion of the total water demand during the late evening and early morning hours, particularly during the months of November and December. The demand for snowmaking can comprise up to one-third of the total water demand over a day at these times. Potable water system demand is typically very low at this time, such that the use of water for snowmaking is typically making use of otherwise idle treatment capacity. Because the City provides water for snowmaking through its raw and finished water storage reservoirs, the peak water demand for snowmaking during the evening can be balanced by a constant rate of diversions from area streams at a much lower rate than the peak 4emand period. For example, an instantaneous snowmaking demand of 2,000 gallons per minute (GPM)--2.9 million gallons per day--lasting for 6 hours would show up as 500 GPM--0.7 million gallons per day--at the treatment plant and point of stream diversion because of the ability to average the peak over the entire day's water production through the use of storage capacity. The City has provided for a similar agreement for provision of untreated water fm snowmaking at Aspen Highlands. The principle feature of this proposed agreement is its ability to reduce the magnitude of the water diverted from Maroon Creek on an instantaneous basis by utilizing the capacity of Leonard Thomas Reservoir to balance similar peak . sri6wmiIKing- demands. over the course. of a day.' If apprOVed by both the City and Aspen Skiing Company, the agreement would substantially reduce the impacts of snowmaking operations to Maroon Creek as compared to provision of this water through an independent water system. d) Water Re-Use Systems-- Wastewater service is provided by Aspen Consolidated Sanitation District. The 1990 Water Management Plan evaluated potential water savings by utilizing reclaimed wastewater for irrigation of the Municipal golf course. The plan estimated a construction cost of $600,000 1 This example uses Utility Billing Area 6. 11