The city of Santa Barbara is offering WaterSmart, a new online customer portal that gives water customers 24/7 access to online tools, data, and information to help monitor and manage their water use, receive leak alerts, and a new location to pay their bill online.

With WaterSmart, Santa Barbara customers can track hourly water use, receive leak alerts, compare usage over time, and explore water efficiency recommendations.

Customers can also customize their notifications to receive updates about leaks, high bills or unplanned use using the portal.

The enhanced data allows customers to better control their bills moving forward, and enables enhanced customer service assistance from the city.

WaterSmart is part of the city’s long-term investment in a system of automated metering infrastructure (AMI); communication networks and software that collects hourly water use over a secure, wireless network and makes that information available to customers more quickly than in the past.

“Today is a proud moment for the city,” said Joshua Haggmark,” Santa Barbara’s water resources manager.

“The official launch of the WaterSmart portal marks the culmination of years of hard work to invest in a complex system of infrastructure and software that ultimately gets more data into the hands of our customers and allows us to provide enhanced customer service,” Haggmark said.

“We hope customers will take advantage of all of the tools available through WaterSmart to make more informed decisions about their water usage,” he said.

Customers can register on the WaterSmart portal, www.SantaBarbaraCA.gov/WaterSmart. They will be prompted to enter their account number and service address zip code to unlock features to help monitor water use, pay their bill, and more.

For more about the city’s AMI project and WaterSmart, visit www.SantaBarbaraCA.gov/AMI or call 805-564-5460.