On 10th Anniversary, EPA Honors WaterSense 2016 Partners of the Year

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is honoring 20 businesses, municipalities, utilities and organizations for their commitment to protecting the environment through water efficiency. EPA’s WaterSense partners have helped Americans save more than 1.5 trillion gallons of water and $32.6 billion in water and energy bills since the program began in 2006.

The winners were chosen from nearly 1,700 WaterSense partners, including utilities, local governments, manufacturers, retailers, distributors, builders and other organizations who have partnered with EPA to produce and promote water-efficient products, programs and homes.

2016 Sustained Excellence Award Winners

Delta Faucet Company (Indiana), a two-time Sustained Excellence winner, spread the word about the performance of WaterSense-labeled showerheads by featuring them at outdoor showering stations that helped clean more than 34,000 muddy runners at Warrior Dash races across the country as part of its HappiMess campaign. The company’s Brizo brand donated WaterSense labeled products to more than 30 homes as part of a charity giveaway supporting pediatric cancer research.

Kohler Co. (Wisconsin) earned its fourth Sustained Excellence Award by, in part, cosponsoring the Change the Course campaign to encourage consumers to pledge to reduce water use. Additionally, Kohler’s mobile showering stations with WaterSense labeled showerheads, toilets and faucets reached more than 2,000 San Francisco, California residents in need, while 100,000 Bonnaroo music festival attendees in Tennessee used similar showering stations.

The Home Depot (Georgia) is a two-time Sustained Excellence winner; all the toilets and bathroom faucets sold in its stores are WaterSense labeled. The company worked last year to ensure that all the showerheads it sells in its stores were WaterSense labeled by September 2016. To drive sales of WaterSense labeled products, the company promoted rebates and more than $43.8 million in product incentives in 2015.

KB Home (California), which received its second consecutive Sustained Excellence Award, constructed 233 WaterSense-labeled homes in 2015, an increase of 142 percent compared to its labeled homes constructed in 2014. The company introduced four KB Home communities in California in which all homes will be built to meet the WaterSense specification.

2016 Partners of the Year

Promotional Partner of the Year: Athens-Clarke County (Georgia) Public Utilities Department’s Water Conservation Office expanded its Certified Blue restaurant program to include 33 new local businesses and distributed “We’re for Water” activity sheets for kids to complete while waiting for meals. Its Little Lily Pad Hop school outreach project taught students how to conserve water, and its sixth annual Athens Water Festival included a scavenger hunt for the WaterSense logo.

Promotional Partner of the Year: Citrus County (Florida) Utilities’ We’re for Water Classroom Challenge taught 400 third through fifth grade students how to find and fix leaks and save water at home. The utility also celebrated Fix a Leak Week with three adult activities: Schedule a Specialist, Facilities Checkup and a Water Conservation Expo.

Promotional Partner of the Year: The City of Charlottesville (Virginia) promoted WaterSense-labeled products during its Love Your Landscape contest during Sprinkler Spruce-Up 2015. For Fix a Leak Week, the city provided off-campus University of Virginia students with leak-detection tablets and held its annual five-kilometer race. A Blue Team of middle and high school students distributed 600 water conservation kits to utility customers.

Promotional Partner of the Year: Cobb County (Georgia) Water System, a five-time Partner of the Year Award winner, and its new mascot Tappy the Turtle, promoted all WaterSense campaigns in 2015. For Fix a Leak Week, the utility supported the Water Drop Dash 5k and Water Festival, and for Sprinkler Spruce-Up it sponsored an “Ask an Expert” traveling display.

Promotional Partner of the Year: Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District launched the Great Plumbing Fixture Giveaway, where a local nonprofit selected through social media earned $1,000 in free WaterSense-labeled fixtures. The district sponsored its annual Water Drop Dash 5k and Water Festival for Fix a Leak Week 2015 with more than 500 runners and provided WaterSense activity sheets for kids.

Licensed Certification Provider Partner of the Year: Energy Inspectors Corporation (Nevada) certified 233 homes for KB Home to meet the WaterSense-labeled homes specification, more than double the number of homes it certified in 2014. As of the end of 2015, the company has trained a dozen inspectors to perform WaterSense specification inspections.

Professional Certifying Organization Partner of the Year: The Sonoma-Marin (California) Saving Water Partnership continued to expand the reach of its WaterSense labeled Qualified Water Efficient Landscape certification program. In 2015, the partnership worked with six new organizations to adopt the QWEL program and helped more than 65 irrigation professionals earn certification.

Nine additional WaterSense partners received Excellence Awards to recognize their support for a specific aspect of the program in 2015:

• Cascade Water Alliance (Washington) and High Sierra Showerheads (California) for Excellence in Strategic Collaboration.
• City of Durham (North Carolina) Water Management and Sonoma-Marin (California) Saving Water Partnership for Excellence in Promoting WaterSense Labeled Products.
• City of Carmel (Indiana) Utilities, City of Fort Worth (Texas), Regional Water Authority (Sacramento, California), and the Toro Company (Minnesota) for Excellence in Education and Outreach.
• American Standard (New Jersey) for Excellence in Innovation and Research.

Learn more about the 2016 WaterSense Award winners at www.epa.gov/watersense.