17607_PMAA_Authority_June_2024

14 The Authority | June 2024 L ooking for W ater L oss By Tim McGaw, Manager, Blair Township Water and Sewer Authority Blair Township Water and Sewer Authority is a smaller system serving just over 900 water customers with 18 miles of waterlines and 1,675 sewer customers with 39 miles of sewer line, and three pump stations to maintain each day. That is a lot to cover with only four workers in the field and still find time to look for water leaks. It is a constant battle to find and fix water leaks plus maintaining the entire system. Our water loss numbers each day was driving me crazy. We were losing an average of 2.5 million gallons of water each month. My water loss numbers were up around 49%. We had to do more. The first thing we did was we all took classes on finding water leaks. During these classes, we found several different ways to find leaks. Along the way, we bought several different leak detection devices that we thought would help us. It got to the point where we could isolate the system by shutting off water valves along the way. We broke the system into zones to help us. We got to the point where we knew the leak was in about a 10-block area. The next problem was that we didn't have enough water pressure to close off the system any further because this area was fed by only one eight-inch water main from one street and only one three-inch main from another street. These led into four shutoff valves in one intersection. Next, we had to upgrade the three-inch line to an eight-inch line. After we got that completed, we found out that two of the four valves in that intersection wouldn't shut all the way off. We decided to dig up the valves and fix it to work better for our needs. Under the new layout we could chase water in different directions to isolate the streets without any of the customers running out of water. We then went back to work finding our big leak. A lot of the problem was that the water lines in that area are plastic, and we found out that sound only seems to carry about 300 feet along a plastic line. Lucky for us, all the homes in that area have meter pits in the yards. We were able to go from pit to pit and stay under the 300-foot number. This is a slow process, but it does work. Before too long, we had the leak narrowed down to one street. Still using our leap frogging method from pit to pit, we hit a high number finding our leak. We then dug up where we heard the noise, finding the problem. It turned out to be a copper service line which led to a vacant lot in the development. We couldn't hear the leak at the curb stop for that lot so we figured the water line had frozen and broken apart somewhere under the roadway. The fix was easy. All we had to do was shut off the curb stop for that service line. When we did that, the noise went away. LEAK FIXED! The next day our numbers were down 80,000 gallons. The numbers have been holding steady now for almost a year. My monthly water loss is now down to 13%. I know we still have some small leaks in the system, but we are still looking for them. I don't know if we will ever get them all but we certainly continue our efforts to do so. S Always