Bilingual App to Help Customers Monitor Their Water Use

Monte Vista Water District would like to help its customers use water more efficiently and to do that it is offering a free app - in both English and Spanish - that makes it easier for residents to track their usage.

Monte Vista Water District has a free web and mobile app called Dropcountr to help its customers track their water use. The app is available through Apple and Android online app stores and at www.dropcountr.com. Courtesy photo

Dropcountr let’s people know how much water they have used based on the most recent meter readings. The data is the same information customers would find on their bills with one exception, said Justin Scott-Coe, water resources and community affairs manager for the Monte Vista Water District.

“The app allows them to put it into context,” Scott-Coe said.

Customers can see how much water they’ve used in gallons, as opposed to cubic feet, a method of measuring usage that can be confusing to people but which regularly appears on water bills, Scott-Coe said.

Telling people how much water they used in gallons, a measurement they use on a daily basis, can go a long way in helping people conceptualize their usage, he said.

It was the cubic feet of water measurement that inspired Robb Barnitt, founder and chief executive officer of Dropcountr, to create the app.

Barnitt was looking at a water bill a number of years ago but the information wasn’t completely clear to him, said Kellock Irvin, head of operations at Dropcountr, which is based in Redwood City.

“It was the early years of the California drought and he didn’t have any context about how much water he used,” Irvin said.

Barnitt found he needed to go through past water bills and do some research to understand his water usage, Irvin said.

The app also allows consumers to analyze there water use to determine how much they’ve used compared to residents within their neighborhood who have homes of similar size, Scott-Coe said. Customers can compare their water consumption from year to year.

All the information is accurate and customers can only see their own information, he said.

So far about 15 different water agencies and 28 to 30 cities of different sizes across the country are using the Dropcountr app, Irvin said.

“We’re helping manage over one million residential account,” Irvin said.

The application is updated regularly and it was within the last week that the app became available in Spanish, he said.

The app is useful to customers as well as agencies who use the app “to better engage with customers,” Irvin said.

In the case of Monte Vista Water District, the agency also uses the app to send information on rebate programs, services and tips tailored to customers based on their water usage, Scott-Coe said.

Read more: Daily Bulletin