Bakersfield
What Bakersfield filed with DWR about the water it produced and the water it billed for, 2016–2025 — and what the filing does and does not let anyone verify.
- Non-revenue water, FY2025
- 15.3% Computed from filed system input and billed consumption.
- system input volume 15,354 sheet Sheet1, cell AN737 · converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- billed authorized consumption 13,005 sheet Sheet1, cell AQ737 · billed metered plus billed unmetered, converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Recoverable annually
- $726,000 Apparent loss is valued at this utility's own reported retail price of water. Real loss is NOT included — DWR publishes a variable production cost whose unit it does not declare, so no dollar figure is put on the leaked water. The real recoverable total is higher than this by an amount this filing does not let anyone state.
- cost of apparent losses, as filed 725,927 sheet Sheet1, cell DH737
- Balance check
- inapplicable DWR derives water losses from system input minus authorized consumption, so this decomposition holds by construction.
2026-09-05-f0dfea5a6026.csvSheet1 AN737
Where this figure comes from
(system input − billed authorized) ÷ system input × 100
From data/archive/ca-dwr-water-loss/2026-09-05-f0dfea5a6026.csv (SHA-256 f0dfea5a6026881d), retrieved 2026-09-05 from the published source.
2026-09-05-f0dfea5a6026.csvSheet1 DH737
Where this figure comes from
cost of apparent losses + cost of real losses, both as computed in the filed audit
From data/archive/ca-dwr-water-loss/2026-09-05-f0dfea5a6026.csv (SHA-256 f0dfea5a6026881d), retrieved 2026-09-05 from the published source.
What the record shows
15.3% non-revenue water in FY2025, higher than 84% of the 141 California systems that filed that year.
- The figure is getting worse across the record.
- 1 of 10 years carry no figure — which by DWR's own note means it had insufficient data to calculate one.
What it charges
$28.49 a month for a household using 6 hundred cubic feet — 4,488 gallons — and $62.33 at 17,952 gallons. Computed from the fixed charge and the tiers this system filed for reporting year 2025, not read off a rate sheet.
The fixed charge is $17.21 a month before any water is used. Billing is monthly, quoted in hundred cubic feet.
- Tier 1, up to 999,999 hundred cubic feet — $1.88 per hundred cubic feet
- Tier 2, above 999,999 hundred cubic feet — $1.88 per hundred cubic feet
Where this figure comes from
fixed charge + each tier's price over the part of 6 HCF that falls in it
- Fixed charge WRSFCostPerUOM1, system CA1510031
- Volumetric tiers WRSFUsageCost1, WRSFUsageCost2, system CA1510031
- Tier tops WRSFMetricUsage1, WRSFMetricUsage2, system CA1510031
- Unit of measure WRUOM, system CA1510031
- Billing frequency WRFrequency, system CA1510031
- The Board's own charge field WR6HCFDWCharges, system CA1510031
From data/archive/ca-ear-rates/2026-09-09-6eba0fd85f1f-section8-charges.jsonl, extracted 2026-09-09 from the Board's published section 8a file. That file has no cells: a value is found by the system identifier and the question abbreviation above.
The Board also publishes an undocumented charge field for this volume. Our figure reproduces it to the cent, which is what establishes that the field is a bill at this volume for systems like this one.
This is what the system reported for reporting year 2025. It is not necessarily the rate in force today, and nothing in the filing says whether it has since changed.
Source: California State Water Resources Control Board, electronic Annual Report 2025, section 8a, filed under Health and Safety Code section 116530. How every California bill on this site compares.
Compliance record
4 violations on EPA's record for this system as of 2026Q2, of which 2 are health-based. 4 resolved, and 0 still open.
Nothing on the record is open as of 2026Q2.
Counted as distinct violations, not as rows: EPA's export carries one row per enforcement action taken against a violation, so a row count would multiply this system's record several times over. A violation here is a breach of a reporting, monitoring or contaminant-level rule as reported to EPA — it is not a measurement of the water, and this site has none.
Source: US EPA, Safe Drinking Water Information System, via the ECHO national download, 2026Q2. How we hold it.
Who filed this audit
Bakersfield City Of filed this audit for FY2025 and operates no other system in the export that year. California keys its export on the filing organization and not on the system, so the two coincide here rather than by definition.
Every figure on this page is read from DWR's published export as this site holds it: a 184-column extract of DWR's 190-column file. Six columns naming individuals, including the contact and the third-party validator, are removed before the bytes are committed, so the click path behind each figure lands on the extract and not on DWR's original. The column letters differ from DWR's for that reason.
DWR derives water losses from system input minus authorized consumption, so these parts sum to the whole on every filing. What a filing can get wrong is which of these numbers were measured.
Where these volumes come from
- System input 15,354 MG sheet Sheet1, cell AN737 · converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Billed authorized 13,005 MG sheet Sheet1, cell AQ737 · billed metered plus billed unmetered, converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Unbilled authorized 112.1 MG sheet Sheet1, cell AW737 · unbilled metered plus unbilled unmetered, converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Apparent loss 332.1 MG sheet Sheet1, cell CC737 · converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Real loss 1,905 MG sheet Sheet1, cell CE737 · converted to million gallons from acre-feet
From data/archive/ca-dwr-water-loss/2026-09-05-f0dfea5a6026.csv (SHA-256 f0dfea5a6026881d), retrieved 2026-09-05 from the published source.
| Year | NRW | Input (MG) | Recoverable | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 15.3% | 15,354 | $726,000 | inapplicable |
| 2024 | 8.1% | 14,429 | $630,000 | inapplicable |
| 2023 | 6.4% | 13,378 | $561,000 | inapplicable |
| 2022 | 5.4% | 13,960 | $534,000 | inapplicable |
| 2021 | 8.0% | 15,503 | $547,000 | inapplicable |
| 2020 | 6.9% | 14,875 | $513,000 | inapplicable |
| 2019 | 5.6% | 13,818 | $486,000 | inapplicable |
| 2018 | — | 13,100 | $494,000 | insufficient |
| 2017 | 6.9% | 13,603 | $472,000 | inapplicable |
| 2016 | 3.4% | 12,323 | $548,000 | inapplicable |
Comparable systems
The same size band — over 50,000 connections.
| System | Basis for comparison | NRW |
|---|---|---|
| Huntington Beach | over 50,000 connections | 3.9% FY2024 |
| Gswc - Southwest | over 50,000 connections | 6.5% FY2024 |
| Moulton Niguel Water District | over 50,000 connections | 5.8% FY2025 |
| Santa Rosa | over 50,000 connections | 5.4% FY2024 |
| Sacramento County Water Agency - Laguna Vineyard | over 50,000 connections | 20.8% FY2024 |
| Los Angeles County Waterworks District No. 40 | over 50,000 connections | 9.0% FY2016 |
| Otay Water District | over 50,000 connections | 5.3% FY2025 |
| Lac Waterworks District 40, Region 4 & 34 | over 50,000 connections | 4.9% FY2024 |
Where is it going?
This page says how much — roughly $726,000 a year. It cannot say which accounts, which zones, or which meters. That takes your billing history, your meter reads, and your production data reconciled against each other.
Our Water Loss Recovery Snapshot is three weeks, one flat fee, and the deliverable is a ranked list of specific accounts and zones with dollars and a confidence on each.
See what the Snapshot delivers Email us about BakersfieldSources and corrections. Every figure above is either filed by the utility or computed from filed figures, and each one says which. If a number here is wrong, it is either wrong in the filing or wrong in our reading of it — tell us which and we will correct the page and say what changed.
- California DWR — urban retail water supplier water loss audits, filed under Water Code section 10608.34. Retrieved 2026-09-05 from data/archive/ca-dwr-water-loss/2026-09-05-f0dfea5a6026.csv. https://data.cnra.ca.gov/dataset/d6cdd89e-49b0-4b1f-86ee-8b7237e5f169/resource/058ac6ca-a8b4-4f28-b6c8-11e48309f3b4/download/ca-retailer-waterlossdata.csv