BILL ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 3090

By: Creighton

Natural Resources

Committee Report (Substituted)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Currently, retail water suppliers perform periodic water loss audits.  In a number of instances, system water loss adversely affects a public water system's need for infrastructure improvements and increased water supply.  In addition, water loss audit information may be used by the Texas Water Development Board in reviewing loan and grant applications.  Interested parties contend that annual water loss audits would assist public water suppliers in identifying areas within infrastructure systems that require improvement, obtaining more accurate estimates of the need for additional water supply and lowering the costs of unsold water that ultimately must be borne by customers.  C.S.H.B. 3090 seeks to address these issues by establishing provisions relating to the frequency of water audits by certain retail public utilities. 

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 3090 amends the Water Code to require a retail public utility providing potable water that serves a population of more than 10,000 or that receives any form of financial assistance from the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) to perform and file with the TWDB an annual water audit computing the utility's system water loss during the preceding year and makes conforming changes. The bill requires such a utility to submit the first annual report not later than May 1, 2013, and requires the utility's initial water audit report to compute the utility's most recent annual system water loss. 

C.S.H.B. 3090 retains the requirement that a retail public utility perform and file with the TWDB every five years a water audit computing the utility's most recent annual system water loss for a retail public utility providing potable water that serves a population of 10,000 or less and that does not receive any form of financial assistance from the TWDB.

C.S.H.B. 3090, in a provision requiring the TWDB to develop appropriate methodologies and submission dates for a required water audit for categories of retail public utilities based on populations served, changes a category from retail public utilities serving populations of 3,300 or less to retail public utilities serving populations of 10,000 or less and makes a conforming change.

C.S.H.B. 3090 makes conforming changes.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2011.

COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE

C.S.H.B. 3090 differs from the original, in a provision requiring a retail public utility providing potable water that serves a certain population or that receives any form of financial assistance from the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) to perform and file with the TWDB an annual water audit computing the utility's system water loss during the preceding year, by specifying such population as a population of more than 10,000, whereas the original specifies a population of more than 3,300.

C.S.H.B. 3090 differs from the original, in a provision requiring the TWDB to develop appropriate methodologies and submission dates for a required water audit for categories of retail public utilities based on populations served, by specifying a category of retail public utilities serving populations of 10,000 or less, rather than 3,300 or less, as in the original.

C.S.H.B. 3090 differs from the original in its conforming changes.