Rant on Water Companies

[Dieter Schprokets]

I run a water utility.

The cost of gallons of water leaking is a cost of doing business.

Most systems lose 10% of their water or more to leakage. Ones with really old leaky pipes lose far more. When there are hundreds of kilometres of watermains involved, which there would be with any City-sized system, it is impossible to eliminate leakage.

Your leak sounds like a small one. It is simply not very unique. There are likely dozens or hundreds more on that system.

What you call "don't really care what they waste" is actually "finite resources"; ie manpower and money.

The cost of a small leak in terms of dollars wasted is less than the cost of fixing it ie the cost of pipe, fittings, labour, equipment time, and road restoration. A leak can cost $3000 to $10,000 to fix.

I am spending $20,000 to $30,000 in leak detection services this year JUST TO FIND the small leaks on the system which do not come to surface but which can be heard and pinpointed with special equipment. We will then fix the ones that are found which we can afford to fix. In so doing, I may get my leakage from about 17% to 10% or so.

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