Arizona Water Meter
System Water Loss
Seven principles for water conservation
Click to see how these principles affect water use:
Much of our Arizona Water Meter report is focused on conservation programs that encourage efficient use by customers, but the water utility itself can lose volumes of water through leaks and pipeline failures. Studies have shown that the amount of water that providers can save by improving supply efficiency, such as preventing system losses, can eclipse the amount of water that can be saved by individual customer efforts.
Water loss can occur due to malfunctioning meters, data handling errors, small leaks, water main breaks, and unauthorized uses . All systems are expected to have some water loss — 10% or less is the benchmark established by the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Lost water provides no benefit to people while driving up the amount of water diverted and the cost of operating the water system. These cities are losing the following percentage of their total water consumption through leaks.
At the most basic level, water utilities rely on customers and field service personnel to identify leaks when enough water has leaked out underground that the soil becomes saturated and water rises to the surface. Payson and Buckeye rely on this type of system to detect leaks.
More active leak detection is used by several utilities, including Casa Grande, Chandler, Lake Havasu City, Mesa, Peoria, Phoenix, and Sierra Vista. Both Casa Grande and Sierra Vista (Arizona Water Company utilities) use a leak detection logger and correlator to survey the distribution system and locate leaks. Chandler has surveyed over 400 miles of its distribution system in the past six years, and estimates that leak repairs have saved the city 8.8 million gallons of water. Mesa uses over 400 permanent noise loggers to listen for leaks in water mains.
Meter replacement programs are another popular method for reducing system losses because meters wear out over time and generally under-report water use. Buckeye, Casa Grande, Chandler, Mesa, Payson, Peoria, Scottsdale, Sierra Vista, Tucson, and Yuma all have some sort of meter repair or replacement program. For example, Chandler replaces more than 200 non-residential meters each year. Mesa has replaced more than 35,000 meters in the past few years, and Tucson has replaced 46,500 in the past four years. Scottsdale has replaced 27,300 meters over the past four years, averting as much as $5.6 million in lost revenues from leaky meters.