Indoor conservation inventives

Santa Rosa home and business owners also are being offered an incentive for indoor water conservation.

The city is offering those who have high-flow toilets -- those that use 3.5 gallons per flush -- a rebate of $150 to replace them with a high-tech model that uses 1.28 gallons or less per flush.

The city has set aside $800,000 to finance the replacement of 4,000 toilets and the cost of city in-home inspections.

The program is expected to reduce the city's water use by 52 million gallons a year.

The city sponsored another toilet retrofit program beginning in the mid-1990s and lasting through 2002.

In that time, the city spent $8 million to finance the replacement of 47,371 high-flow toilets with low-flow models, a program that included installation of devices to reduce water flows from showers and faucets.

City officials estimate that program reduced indoor water use by 10 percent, or 584 million gallons a year.

-- Mike McCoy