Sonoma
What Sonoma filed with DWR about the water it produced and the water it billed for, 2016–2024 — and what the filing does and does not let anyone verify.
- Non-revenue water, FY2024
- 7.9% Computed from filed system input and billed consumption.
- system input volume 624.9 sheet Sheet1, cell AN4329 · converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- billed authorized consumption 575.3 sheet Sheet1, cell AQ4329 · billed metered plus billed unmetered, converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Recoverable annually
- $104,000 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 104,257 sheet Sheet1, cell DH4329
- Balance check
- inapplicable DWR derives water losses from system input minus authorized consumption, so this decomposition holds by construction.
2026-09-05-f0dfea5a6026.csvSheet1 AN4329
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 DH4329
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
7.9% non-revenue water in FY2024, higher than 42% of the 545 California systems that filed that year.
- The figure is getting worse across the record.
What it charges
No bill is published for this system. Our computation from this system's filed rate structure and the Board's own undocumented charge field for the same volume disagree, and the field carries no definition to settle which is right.
It did answer the Board's customer-charge questions for reporting year 2025; what is missing is what a comparable figure needs.
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
9 violations on EPA's record for this system as of 2026Q2, of which 1 is health-based. 8 resolved, and 1 still open.
- Notification, Known or Potential LSL unaddressed, from July 2, 2025
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
Sonoma City Of filed this audit for FY2024 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 624.9 MG sheet Sheet1, cell AN4329 · converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Billed authorized 575.3 MG sheet Sheet1, cell AQ4329 · billed metered plus billed unmetered, converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Unbilled authorized 1.44 MG sheet Sheet1, cell AW4329 · unbilled metered plus unbilled unmetered, converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Apparent loss 8.69 MG sheet Sheet1, cell CC4329 · converted to million gallons from acre-feet
- Real loss 39.4 MG sheet Sheet1, cell CE4329 · 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 7.9% | 624.9 | $104,000 |
| 2023 | 9.6% | 579.1 | $89,900 |
| 2022 | 8.9% | 603.9 | $90,000 |
| 2021 | 7.6% | 612.9 | $82,400 |
| 2020 | 6.5% | 710 | $86,900 |
| 2019 | 14.0% | 674.8 | $62,000 |
| 2018 | 9.8% | 676.2 | $68,300 |
| 2017 | 7.1% | 651.2 | $59,200 |
| 2016 | 6.0% | 566.3 | $50,500 |
Comparable systems
The same size band — 3,300–10,000 connections.
| System | Basis for comparison | NRW |
|---|---|---|
| Nipomo Community Services District | 3,300–10,000 connections | 14.1% FY2024 |
| Lincoln Avenue Water Company | 3,300–10,000 connections | 10.2% FY2024 |
| Scotts Valley Water District | 3,300–10,000 connections | 8.7% FY2024 |
| California City | 3,300–10,000 connections | 19.4% FY2020 |
| Liberty Utilities (park Water) | 3,300–10,000 connections | 3.7% FY2024 |
| Carpinteria Valley Water District | 3,300–10,000 connections | 3.9% FY2025 |
| Lomita | 3,300–10,000 connections | 7.5% FY2024 |
| La Palma | 3,300–10,000 connections | 3.3% FY2024 |
Where is it going?
This page says how much — roughly $104,000 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 SonomaSources 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