It’s one of our most precious resources — we rely on it for every shower, every pot of pasta and every thirst-quenching drink. It’s also extremely affordable.
Water is an essential part of life, and bringing safe, high-quality water to you every day takes teams of experts who maintain the systems, test and purify the water, and keep it flowing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Our nation’s eyes are on water, particularly in the Southwest where leaders are making decisions about managing the water supply and mitigating drought. At EPCOR, our team is committed to not only delivering high-quality water to tens of thousands of families — just like yours — every day, we’re also investing in the future to make sure the water keeps flowing for decades to come.
Managing your water system is about more than pipes, valves and hydrants. It’s also about smart management, wise investment, and careful planning to make sure communities and businesses have access to the clean, responsibly managed water they expect.
Take a few moments to learn about our vision, how we manage your water system, the amazing journey a drop of water takes to reach your home, and what you can do to protect and conserve our water supply.
Running a water company is about delivering safe, quality water to our customers. When you pay your water bill each month, you’re also supporting an entire system that services your community.
What’s in a dollar of water?
We deliver safe, reliable and high-quality water and wastewater at the lowest possible cost. Your monthly water bill pays for the water you consume for drinking, washing dishes, watering your lawn or taking a shower.
But it also goes much further. Water bills help to maintain your water system — thousands of miles of pipes, thousands of meters and valves, hundreds of water mains and wells, and more – so the water will be there decades from now.
For every dollar you spend for service, 97 cents go toward operating, maintaining and repairing the system, and costs beyond our control such as regulatory fees and taxes.
Depending on where you live, you might be drinking water that comes from a well that was drilled during WWII or a pipe that was installed during the Eisenhower administration. That pipe would eventually need to be repaired and replaced — and likely, that day is sooner rather than later.
You also could be sending your wastewater to a state-of-the-art treatment plant that recycles and recharges water to make sure that we’re renewing our resources.
As we continue to focus on responsibly managing our resources, every customer helps to support the system when they pay their monthly bill.
Bringing water to you
A single drop of water goes through a transformation to reach a faucet in your home. Whether the water starts underground in an aquifer or as a snowflake falling on a mountain, it takes a feat of engineering and management to take that droplet, test it, pump it and deliver it to your home.
The water cycle begins when precipitation falls on a mountain or on the ground. Rain and snow slowly permeate the ground to supply the aquifer underground. Water also trickles down mountains and into streams, which gradually supply canals.
EPCOR provides customers with more than 58 million gallons of water every day. When water enters our system, we begin to process, filter and test it. The treated, drinkable water leaves our plant and enters the system to reach your home. But that’s not the end of the cycle. Once water goes down the drain and leaves your home, it’s also recycled and reused, continuing the lifespan of water.
Sourcing your tap water
Delivering high-quality, safe, affordable water 365 days a year is about much more than drilling a well in the ground, or connecting a meter to your home. It involves expertise in hydrology, conservation, engineering and many other disciplines.
But perhaps most of all, a responsible water utility must be a good steward of our water. As we’ve witnessed water levels in lakes and reservoirs fall, smart water management is even more important.
World-class water stewardship
EPCOR is known for world-class water stewardship, and we take the drought and the health of the water supply very seriously. Our president and members of our senior team are on the boards of the National Association of Water Companies, the advisory board of Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy at the Morrison Institute and the external advisory board of the Water Resources Research Council at the University of Arizona. Our staff members are also represented on the boards of the AZ Water Association and Water Utilities Association of Arizona.
We’ve been asked to provide recommendations to the Environmental Protection Agency on ways suppliers can improve water safety and testing, and our leadership has appeared before Congress to provide insight into real-life water management.
And in the cities and towns we serve, we’re not only residents, we’re also leading efforts to prepare responsibly for the future. The Lower Colorado River Basin Drought Contingency Plan is a great example of that. EPCOR’s team worked on the collaborative steering committee that crafted the DCP, and we’re the only private utility participating in the DCP Implementation Plan.
When we look at the water industry today and into the future, EPCOR is ready for the long term with the expertise, experience and forward-thinking commitment our customers can count on.
