Missing 1 Million Of Water In Tiny Town

The challenges facing a municipality in Canada shows how water loss can become a costly problem for a small community.

“The Town of Olds is losing $700,000 to $1 million worth of water a year, says the town’s chief operating officer,”  Innisfail Province reported. The problem is “water loss and infiltration into sewers.”

Doug Wagstaff, chief operating officer in Olds, explained the root of the problem.

“Wagstaff said as far as they can tell, the problem appears to be with sewer/water infrastructure in a part of town built primarily in the 1980s. He said one part of the problem appears to be that some homeowners are directing water from their sump pumps into the sewer. Water main breaks and leaks appear to be other parts of the problem. He said there’s a reason it’s believed cracks in the pipes are an issue,” according to the report.

The town is following the flow in hopes of reducing its outlays.

“We know that’s happening somewhere because when we have rain events, we’re metering the sewer going out. You get a rain event and it goes up,” Wagstaff said. “It’s kind of like playing a great big game of — there used to be an app you had on your phone, I think it was called ‘pipes.’ It’s just like playing a real-life game of that — trying to find out where the water’s going.”

The problem presents a major cost challenge to Olds.

“Because if we can capture even half of that seven hundred thousand to a million dollars a year that we’re either literally flushing one way or the other — either out or in — that’s a significant savings to us all, either in reinvestment or just not having to raise taxes,” Wagstaff said, per the report.

Olds is hardly alone. According to a report by the World Bank, “the total cost to water utilities caused by non-revenue water worldwide can be conservatively estimated at $141 billion per year, with a third of it occurring in the developing world.”

Even in California, where water is precious and the whole state is working to conserve, water loss from utilities remains a major problem.

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Taxonomy

• Rainwater Harvesting
• Dewatering
• Water Supply
• Water Harvesting Structure Design
• Advanced Metering Infrastructure
• Groundwater Prospecting
• Waterproofing
• Decommissioning
• Central Water Commission
• Central Water Commission
• Watermarking