PUBLIC UTILITIES ADVISORY BOARD AGENDA ITEM
ACTION REQUESTED:
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Receive the Water Utility System Performance Metrics Report
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DEPARTMENT: Water Utilities
SUBMITTED BY: Darrell Blenniss, Director of Water Utilities
BOARD/COMMISSION REVIEW:
N/A
BACKGROUND:
This memo provides a summary and analysis of our core metric dashboards. The data reflects our year-to-date (YTD) performance through August 2026 across safety, system reliability, water consumption, wastewater treatment, and distribution infrastructure.
Overall, the utility is performing well within our designed capacities, showing notable improvements in system reliability and pacing favorably in infrastructure leak reduction compared to the prior year.
DISCUSSION:
City Safety: Vehicle Incidents
Safety remains a top priority for our department. Year-to-date, the Department of Public Utilities - Water (DPU-W) has recorded 2 preventable vehicle incidents, mirroring our performance at this time last year (2 incidents).
Incident Types: The incidents involved one backing collision and one rear-ended collision.
Financial Impact: These resulted in $251 in vehicle damage and $5,634 in third-party damage.
Trend & Action: While our overall incident count is very low (especially compared to other city departments like the NPD, which has 11 YTD), the nature of these incidents reinforces the need for our continued emphasis on routine defensive driving and situational awareness training for our operators.
System Reliability: SAIDI
The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) measures the number of minutes the average customer can expect to be without water service during a 12-month period.
Current Performance: As of July 2026, our 12-month average SAIDI is 5.14 minutes. This is an excellent 15.48% improvement (decrease) compared to the prior year's 6.08 minutes.
Noteworthy Trend: Historically, our SAIDI had been trending steadily upward from a low of 1.40 in 2012 to a peak of 6.62 in 2021. The c...
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