The committee adopted a substitute to House Bill 29 that alters the validation and mitigation-plan requirements for large water systems. Under the committee substitute, all systems with more than 150,000 service connections will be required annually to validate the results of their water-loss audits and submit water-loss mitigation plans.

The substitute removes a prior requirement that triggered the more detailed validation only when losses exceeded a water-loss ratio threshold; instead, the substitute phases in more detailed validation contingent on five consecutive years of water losses and modifies the timeline so large systems have adequate time to conduct validations and implement changes.

Senator Perry and committee members discussed the substitute as being in lieu of Senate Bill 1190 and noted the change better fits the operational reality for large systems. The committee adopted the substitute and reported House Bill 29 favorably to the full Senate; the committee then recommended the substitute for the local and uncontested calendar after the roll call.

Next steps: the committee-reported substitution moves to the full Senate calendar for further action.