In June, the biggest 100 residential customers of the San Antonio Water System and the Bexar Metropolitan Water District used the same amount of water as 3,000 average households.

Together, those top 200 consumed more than 31 million gallons, enough to fill 56 Olympic-sized swimming pools. By far, most of the water went for lawns and landscaping.

Both utilities compile monthly lists of the heaviest users and pay special attention to them because the potential for conservation is huge, especially while San Antonio copes with one of the more severe droughts on record.

Rainfall is a foot below normal, everyone is being forced to conserve and tougher restrictions on outdoor watering, down to twice a month, are not out of the question with no respite in sight.

If just a handful of those repeatedly on the lists changed their ways, a million gallons of water would be saved each year. Both utilities have employees trying to do just that, and one at SAWS works exclusively with the top 1 percent.

Some customers joined the biggest users because of an inadvertent, one-time glitch that boosted their bills by thousands of dollars.


By comparison, the average San Antonio household uses a little more than 10,000 gallons a month during the summer.


Robinson, whose house on three acres in the Dominion now is for sale, said he has let his lawn go dormant but most likely his irrigation system is leaking again and he would have it fixed.

Greehey's spokeswoman, Mary Rose Brown, said in an email that Greehey has a 3.5-acre landscaped yard, which is watered by a contractor in accordance with the city rules, and that's the reason he's consistently one of the city's top water users. She added he also had a pool leak.

How to be No. 1

To use as much water as the household at the top of SAWS' June 100 list, one would have to run five showers plus a bathroom faucet continuously for a month.

The Tharakan family in Stone Oak did it with a few broken sprinkler heads.

On average, they had used 20,000 to 30,000 gallons a month. Then in June their water use spiked to 584,266 gallons. The bill was $5,868.

Reshmey Tharakan was horrified.

"I grew up here in San Antonio," she said. "Water is like gold. ... We don't believe in hurting the environment in any way."

When they built their custom home on a steep slope above the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, the Tharakans said they consciously decided to leave half of the property natural due to the slope and do the minimum landscaping in the front yard required by their property owner association rules.

Because of the lot's porous limestone, the water from the broken sprinkler heads never pooled and went unnoticed.

After they received their June bill, calls to SAWS resulted in a reduced charge, but little sympathy.

"It is a luxury item," SAWS conservation director Karen Guz said about irrigation systems. "You have a responsibility to understand your system."

Repairs completed, the Tharakans were no longer on the 100 list in July.

When a BexarMet customer is concerned about a high bill, conservation director Nathan Riggs does a home audit and offers landscaping advice.

SAWS dedicates one employee, Juan Soulas, to reducing the water use of the top 1 percent of its customers.

His home visits can last two hours. He brings with him a team of master gardener volunteers who offer suggestions to homeowners and their maintenance staff on how to run their irrigation systems more efficiently and change their landscaping so it requires less water. They provide a personalized report, and Soulas follows up with the homeowner later.

Last year, his conservation work generated an annual savings of 28 acre-feet, enough water to supply more than 110 households for a year. Now SAWS has doubled the reach of Soulas' program.

His pitch is simple.

"During a recent review of SAWS' highest residential water bills for 2010, we learned your usage is more than 99 percent of other residential users," his form letter reads. "Whatever the reason, using more water than you need costs you money — money we'd like to help you save."

A new approach

Guz, who is Soulas' boss, is overseeing a change in how SAWS views its customers.

It used to be that customers were encouraged to use as much water as they wanted as long as they could afford it. Now, Guz explained, SAWS has a tiered rate structure that charges more per gallon as use goes up. The higher rates went into effect last fall, and residents are noticing them now.

If that "price signal" is not enough, SAWS also is urging customers to use less in a variety of ways — from offering low-flow toilets and showerheads to lessons on how to fix your toilet flap and enhance your garden with drought-happy plants.

The change is for financial reasons, Guz explained.

For decades, San Antonio has benefited from some of the cheapest water rates in the state because of the Edwards Aquifer, which lies below the city. But due to competing demands on the aquifer, that supply is now limited.

"We've run out of our cheap water," SAWS spokeswoman Anne Hayden said.

As the conservation directors for both utilities explained, it's less expensive to have customers conserve than to pay for the construction of new pipelines or plants to treat or desalinate water.

The start-up cost of a big water project would be $1 billion and drive up everyone's water bills, Hayden said, even though the demand comes mainly from those who do landscape irrigation.

"The question is: Is it fair for everyone to pay for more expensive new water projects that are driven by high landscaping water use?" she said.

In preparing SAWS' public response about the drought, Hayden is trying to change the public's perception of green lawns.

She's getting out the message that a drought is an ideal time to kill a lawn for good and replace it with more drought-tolerant plants once the rain returns.

Some customers have responded, either to the message or the higher water bills.

Betty Atwell lives on six acres and was shocked when a leak in her irrigation system pushed her monthly water use up to 295,000 gallons, No. 5 on SAWS' list in June. She immediately found the leak, had it repaired and went to an agricultural supply store and bought five rain catchment tanks and installed them under her eaves. She had them ready in time to catch the scant rain that fell in July and now is using that water to irrigate her trees.

Others see the high bills and keep on paying.

Aliece Hollis lives in Terrell Hills and is consistently in the top five of the city's water users, even during droughts.

"This house is on 4.5 acres of land," she said. "Unfortunately, it just takes more water to water all of that."

Hollis' yard is the type that SAWS would like to see changed. The house, built in 1952, is surrounded by a green lawn and oak trees that are watered weekly with a sprinkler system. Hollis did replace her old sprinkler system with a more efficient one, but to keep the lawn green during the drought, she said her groundskeeper now spends most of his time hand-watering the yard.

"For me, it would not look right for the yard to be a xeriscape," Hollis said. "We are not trying to abuse anything. ... It's just that we have this big lawn that we try to maintain."

It's a choice she can make. But it's one that only will only grow more expensive as the cost of water continues to rise.