Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a decision-making process to determine pest levels and tolerance thresholds and combines biological, cultural, physical, and chemical tools to minimize health, environmental, and financial risks. The method uses extensive knowledge about pests, such as infestation thresholds, life histories, environmental requirements, and natural enemies to complement and facilitate biological and other natural control of pests.

The City's Solid Waste Program provides contract administration for garbage, yard refuse, recycling and street sweeping services and solid waste program management and outreach to the community. The program serves businesses, multi-family properties and single-family customers in Davis’ 10.5 square mile service area and includes the collection of organics, recycling and trash.

The collection of solid waste is carefully regulated by the State for human and environmental health and safety purposes. Managing waste is necessary in order to ensure healthy communities and the process to manage waste has changed drastically over the past 30 years by viewing waste as a resource rather than just trash.

Learn more about the City's Solid Waste Program

Stormwater is the water from precipitation that flows across the ground and pavement when it rains.  Stormwater starts as just rainwater, but as it runs off roofs, yards, driveways, and any impervious surface, it can pick up pollutants such as dirt, trash, animal waste, oil, gas, fertilizers, pesticides, metals, and other materials in its path.

Impervious surfaces, such as roads, parking lots and driveways, prevent stormwater from being absorbed into the ground.  Instead, stormwater runs off the ground and into the storm drain system.  The City’s storm drain system is composed of on-street storm drain inlets, underground stormwater pipes, stormwater detention ponds, drainage channels, and stormwater lift stations. These facilities are all designed to convey stormwater and prevent flooding as they move stormwater away from properties and streets. In Davis, our drainage channels, detention ponds and wetlands all have natural soil surfaces and vegetation so some of the stormwater can infiltrate into the soil and be filtered by the vegetation. The rest of the stormwater from Davis will eventually flow into the Sacramento River and out to the San Francisco Bay.  

Learn more about Stormwater Quality.

The city's water conservation program covers the customer water use portal, AquaHawk, drought and water use restrictions, leak detection, yard and landscape water use and saving water indoors and outdoors. In California, water conservation and water use efficiency are a way of life. The water conservation program provides outreach and education to encourage water customers to use water efficiently and adhere to use regulations during periods of drought. 

The water conservation program oversees the city's customer water use portal, AquaHawk. The AquaHawk customer water use portal is available to all City of Davis water customers. The AquaHawk portal allows our customers to view their hourly water usage and set and then receive usage alerts. When registering for the first time, you will need your account number and service address.

Learn more about Water Conservation

Track Your Water Use (AquaHawk)

The City is required to monitor its source water and treated drinking water for Title 22 compliance, as mandated by the California Code of Regulations. The City operates its water system under Permit 01-09-17-PER-006 and must follow the requirements of the permit to ensure delivery of safe drinking water. 

The City is required to sample certain constituents weekly, quarterly, and/or annually to ensure safe drinking water is delivered. These results are reported to the State by the 10th of the following month.

The city's water quality program collects samples on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis depending on the constituent and sampling program. Typically, the City collects: 

• 20 distribution system bacteriological samples weekly
• 4 distribution system monitoring samples monthly
• 22 groundwater well samples and 40 disinfection by-products quarterly
• 132 groundwater well samples
• 30 residential Lead and Copper Samples Triennially

 The City collects samples beyond what is required by State and Federal drinking water standards in order to better understand the quality of water being delivered. Learn more about the Water Quality Program

The City’s wastewater system brings wastewater to the City's Wastewater Treatment Plant, where it is treated to remove contaminants before being discharged to the environment. Wastewater treatment plants can remove most contaminants from water, but they can’t remove everything. In order to prevent water pollution and damage to the Wastewater Treatment Plant and City wastewater system, it’s essential that we keep harmful items out of the wastewater.

The Pretreatment Program is responsible for providing regulatory oversight of wastewater discharges in our service area, with an emphasis on industrial and  commercial (non-residential) customers. The goal is to protect the conveyance system and the City’s Wastewater Treatment Plant from harmful discharges through permitting, sampling, enforcement and oversight related to industrial discharges. Additionally, the pretreatment program implements significant source reduction programs, outreach and education programs and incident response.

Learn more about the Pretreatment Program

untreated. Wastewater entering a treatment plant is also called influent, and treated wastewater is called effluent.

Learn more about how wastewater is treated.

The City’s Urban Wildlife Program is responsible for wildlife and wildlife habitat conservation, planning and management.

Davis has many wonderful mature trees, densely vegetated greenbelts and natural open space areas. These areas are attractive to a wide variety of wildlife including common, rare and protected species. Having wildlife live so close to home provides a great opportunity to watch and enjoy them. However, urban wildlife can also create problems when they eat our fruits and vegetables or damage our homes or landscaping. Humans have the responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth, including working to coexist with wildlife.

Learn more about the City's Urban Wildlife Program.