Planning Tools and Documents

Finding and evaluating new sources of water supply is very complicated, and these projects take decades to plan and design. These planning tools and documents reflect our ongoing planning efforts. We update them regularly.

Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP)

The UWMP will provide an overview of our water deliveries and uses, water supply sources, and water conservation programs. It will also include discussions on supply and demand projections over a 25-year planning horizon (from 2020 to 2045), available water supplies to meet existing and future demands under a range of water supply conditions, and our water demand management measures to reduce long-term water demand.

Water Conservation Plan

This 2020 Retail Water Conservation Plan (draft) provides an overview of the retail water conservation program, the factors that shape the program, estimated water savings, and the program’s effect on the overall retail water demand forecast.

Water Supply Assessments

Water Code Sections 10910-10915 provide a nexus between the regional land use planning process and the environmental review process. The law also reflects the growing awareness of the need to incorporate water supply and demand analysis at the earliest possible stage in the land use planning process. The core of this law is a water supply assessment (WSA) of whether available water supplies are sufficient to serve the demand generated by projects of a specified size (water demand projects), as well as the reasonably foreseeable cumulative demand in the region over the next 20 years under a range of hydrologic conditions.

Under Water Code Section 10912(a), a water demand project means any of the following:

1.  A proposed residential development of more than 500 dwelling units.
2.  A proposed shopping center or business establishment employing more than 1,000 persons or having more than 500,000 square feet of floor space.
3.  A proposed commercial office building employing more than 1,000 persons or having more than 250,000 square feet of floor space.
4.  A proposed hotel or motel, or both, having more than 500 rooms.
5.  A proposed industrial, manufacturing, or processing plant, or industrial park planned to house more than 1,000 persons, occupying more than 40 acres of land, or having more than 650,000 square feet of floor area.
6.  A mixed-use project that includes one or more of the projects specified in this subdivision.
7.  A project that would demand an amount of water equivalent to, or greater than, the amount of water required by a 500 dwelling unit project.

Important Information for Preparing a WSA

• Project Demand memo instructions.
• Project Demand memo template
• Memo regarding determining the equivalent project standard under Water Code Section 10912(a)(7) 
• Single-building Water Use Calculator and District-scale Water Use Calculator are available under the Project Submittal Resources section of the Onsite Water Reuse webpage

To submit your WSA or if you have a specific question about the WSA, please email Jennifer Lee at jenlee@sfwater.org