The City of Arvada water utility has undertaken various actions to improve the accounting for all water throughout the water system and to achieve water savings within the community it serves. The actions include an annual systemwide water audit, distribution system leak detection, improved preventive maintenance, and a comprehensive water conservation program. The cost effectiveness of many of these efforts have been well documented, while others in the water conservation program will continue to be monitored for several years to determine the permanency of the water demand reduction. Arvada has always advocated wise water use and metered all of its customers. Traditionally, it planned to supply future water needs for continued growth through the purchase and development of additional water supplies. However, since the late 1980s, the securing of large new water supplies for Arvada has become less certain and the utility turned its attention to better management of present water supplies and towards reducing customers' water consumption. Thereby Arvada expects to stretch existing water supplies. To measure the effectiveness of these efforts, it became apparent that tighter accountability of all water uses would be necessary. The utility embarked on reducing the annual volume of unaccounted-for water, i.e., system losses.