This explainer video for water utilities opens with disarming honesty: “You may only know us as the people that send you a bill every other month.” From there, LADWP shows Los Angeles what that bill actually buys, 7,200 miles of pipe (enough to reach Antarctica), a 40 percent reduction in pipe breaks over a decade, and a plan to cut purchased water in half by 2034.
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About This Water Utility Explainer Video
The Challenge: A utility’s relationship with ratepayers is usually one document long: the bill. LADWP needed Angelenos to understand aging infrastructure, drought exposure, and the investment case for local water, before those topics arrive as rate discussions.
The Solution: A flat vector 2D animation that travels from a cityscape down into cross-sections of underground pipe and out to map views of the Sierra snowpack, the LA Aqueduct, and the 300-mile pumping routes the city relies on in drought years. Stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup, and recycled water then get their own scenes as the way forward, alongside conservation programs like the cash-in-your-lawn rebate.
The Result: A civic story that turns “why is my bill what it is” into “here’s what we’re building,” delivered in under two minutes at myladwp.com.
Key Features That Make This Utility Explainer Work
- Scale you can feel: mapping 7,200 miles of pipe as a line from LA to Antarctica converts an unimaginable number into one unforgettable image.
- Geography as narrative: following the water from Sierra snowpack through aqueducts to the tap makes drought exposure concrete, not abstract.
- Progress with receipts: the 40 percent pipe-break reduction and the 50-percent-by-2034 purchased-water goal anchor the story in verifiable commitments.
- A path for the viewer: ending on rebates and free water-saving devices gives every resident an action, not just information.
Technical Details
Year: 2015
Format: 2D flat vector animation with maps and cross-sections
Style: Civic-minded blues and greens, friendly utility-worker characters
Purpose: Ratepayer education and infrastructure communications
Key Metrics: 7,200 miles of pipe, 40 percent fewer pipe breaks, 50 percent purchased-water reduction target by 2034
Runtime: 1:55
Target Audience: Los Angeles residents and business owners
Deliverables: Public outreach and myladwp.com
Why Animation Works for Water Utilities
A utility’s most important work is buried, literally. Pipes, groundwater basins, and treatment systems can’t be filmed in any way that holds a resident’s attention.
Animation puts the camera anywhere: inside a cross-section of century-old pipe, above a watershed map, alongside a stormwater capture basin. Our 2D animation work for utilities leans on exactly this freedom to make invisible systems legible.
And when infrastructure decisions eventually reach the public as votes and rate cases, a community that has seen the system is a community that can weigh it, which is why this 2015 piece was built for ratepayers, not engineers.
Related Utility Explainer Work
See how we’ve told infrastructure and conservation stories for other utilities:
- LADWP – Local Water Supply
- Eastern Municipal Water District – Wastewater Treatment Process
- Otay Water District – F.O.G. Education
- Browse the full TADApix portfolio
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If your ratepayers only hear from you at billing time, an animated story can show them the system they own. We’ve been making utility work visible for 15+ years.
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