Humans are often regarded as endpoints of water supply systems, their behaviour adjustable to match supply constraints or savings targets. But they are also its starting points: only by means of surveyors, scientists, engineers, governments and technocrats have the waters of Earth come to be systematised into extractable, managed and commodified resources available to meet human-defined objectives, such as improved public health and domestic convenience, in an environment made increasingly uncertain owing to global rearrangements of terrestrial resources (including carbon) by humans. An early responder to challenges of sustainability and climate change, the water sector developed demand reduction strategies that now provide examples—not all emulable—for adaptation strategies in other sectors. Broad acceptance of ‘triple bottom line’ sustainability, realisations that experts’ solutions are contestable by publics and require their cooperation, and growing responsibilities for demand management involving consumption and consumers, have all highlighted water’s social dimensions. But as in the climate change sector, where “The drivers of the carbon based economy are embedded in culture, history and politics, rarely the realm of biophysical scientists” (Bellette 2012, p.5), there is a problematic mismatch between the technical and scientific expertise of water managers and the nature of the demand they attempt to predict and control. Lacking expertise to deal with the complex social character of water demand, yet seemingly reluctant to recruit it, the water industry mobilised its supply-side experience to formulate resource-centred approaches that emphasised efficiencies, volumes and pricing. This strategy maps the limits of the water supply system, then determines how to change people’s water behaviours and household fittings to fit system constraints. Information and technology could turn householders into rational and efficient ‘micro-resource managers’; social marketing could convert them into guilty customers who would change their attitudes, Water Resour Manage (2013) 27:949–951 DOI 10.1007/s11269-012-0224-9