Administrative Feasibility: Verification, Privacy, and Program Administration

An occupancy adjustment must be administrable as well as conceptually fair. The relevant question is not whether administration is cost-free; no utility program is. The evidence instead asks whether ordinary utility processes can support a neutral occupancy adjustment with reasonable verification, privacy protections, and program-integrity controls.

The comparable programs reviewed in this report rely on established customer-service functions rather than a new regulatory system. Customers request an adjustment, utility staff review the request, and supporting information is provided where the program requires it. Participation can remain voluntary: customers who do not seek an adjustment continue under the standard tariff and need not provide occupancy information for this purpose. That structure limits the number of accounts requiring review and preserves a customer's choice whether to participate.³⁵

Verification serves more than one purpose. It protects program integrity, but it also protects other customers by ensuring that the adjusted baseline is available under consistent rules rather than by unsupported assertion. Different utilities use different levels of proof and staff review. That variation supports a flexible New York approach: the Commission can require enough information to establish eligibility without assuming that one particular document list is the only workable method.

Online applications, electronic attachments, account records, and ordinary customer-service workflows can reduce paperwork and make review more efficient. These tools should not be described as proving that a New York program would be inexpensive or require no additional staff. Actual cost depends on the number of applications, the verification standard, renewal frequency, system capabilities, and other utility-specific choices.

Privacy requires equally deliberate design. IRWD's rules address handling of documents submitted for variances, while LVMWD and Boulder publish general website privacy policies addressing information provided through online forms or services. IRWD and Boulder also use renewal or reconfirmation procedures, which can account for changing household circumstances. A New York program should likewise define what information is collected, who may access it, how long it is retained, and when an adjustment must be renewed or reconfirmed. The evidence shows that privacy protections can be built into the process; it does not suggest that collecting household information is risk-free.³⁶

New York's own 2017 record also shows why administrative concerns should be addressed directly. The Commission declined to require the community-specific anthropological service classification proposed in Case 16-W-0130 because it would be unjustifiably difficult to administer. That is a legitimate caution. The present proposal is materially different: it concerns a neutral, optional adjustment based on verified household occupancy and would apply under the same eligibility rules to any qualifying household. Comparable utility programs do not eliminate the need to design that process carefully, but they demonstrate that reviewing household occupancy is not inherently unworkable.³⁷

Program integrity can be supported through ordinary controls: staff review, authority to request additional support when needed, denial of unsupported applications, defined effective periods, and renewal or audit provisions where appropriate. Such controls should be proportionate to the benefit at issue. The objective is a process that is accurate and credible without becoming so burdensome that eligible households are effectively discouraged from participating.

Administration should also remain connected to conservation. An occupancy adjustment would not replace conservation education, leak reduction, water-efficient fixtures, or other demand-management measures. Households of every size remain capable of - and responsible for - using water efficiently. An appropriately designed starting allowance and strong conservation outreach can operate alongside one another.

The administrative evidence therefore supports a measured conclusion. Comparable programs document workable tools for applications, resident-count review, documentation, privacy, renewal, and program integrity. New York would still need to determine the appropriate level of verification and the actual administrative cost for the utility involved. Those are implementation questions to be solved in designing the program, not reasons to treat an occupancy adjustment as administratively impossible.