Billions of litres of treated drinking water are being lost in Canadian communities every year.
The City of Lacombe is among those municipalities trying to get a handle on the problem and find ways to stem the flow of losses.
A recently completed water audit suggests it is on the right track. In 2022, the city’s water loss was reduced to 16.2 per cent from 16.7 per cent the previous year.
While an improvement, there are still nearly 200 million litres of water — an estimated 186 million litres from leaky pipes or breaks — that is unaccounted for each year. That is the equivalent of nearly 75 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Lacombe operations and planning director Jordan Thompson said the goal is to continue to reduce losses to the national average of around 13 per cent.
“It’s trending in the right direction, but there’s still work to do.”
The first task when the city decided two years ago to target loss was to find out how much was going missing and where and what are just apparent losses attributed to meter issues. In 2021, the first American Water Works Association-certified audit took place.
“What the audit attempts to do is answer that exact question: where are the losses.”
Thompson said a number of steps are being taken to reduce losses, including ensuring the amount of water coming into the system is accurately measured and that meters are accurately recording residential and business usage.
“A lot of large meters can have a much more inaccurate measurement compared to small meters,” he said. “We’re making sure that customers with large meters actually need those large meters.”
Preventing water from leaking out of water mains is a difficult task.
“Unless a leak surfaces that becomes apparent — ie. someone calls in a leak that we promptly repair — it is very difficult to find leaks in the system.”
Leak-detecting technologies exist and Lacombe continues to research what might work. The downside is the technology can often be very expensive, time-consuming, labour-intensive and not guaranteed to find all leaks.
“That will be the next step for us to explore proactive water leak detection strategies.”
Municipal water loss is a big issue nationwide.
A 2021 Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario study found that while many communities reported water losses in the 10 per cent range, when consultants tested they found loss rates up to 40 per cent. The Town of Smith Falls had loss rates between 41 and 67 per cent from 2003 to 2019.
The City of Toronto was losing about 103 million litres a day — enough water to supply a community of 250,000 people.
Reducing losses can pay big dividends. The study found that fixing leakage in a single section of pipeline in York Region saved 139 million litres a year and $400,000.
The City of Red Deer has been tackling the water loss problem for longer than Lacombe and has seen much success — from 15 per cent losses in 2015 to 4.2 per cent in 2022. That is already ahead of the 2035 target of seven per cent.
Red Deer water superintendent Alex Monkman said much of the city’s water losses were not due to leaky pipes but reflected that aging meters were not accurately capturing the amount of water customers were using and paying for. There were also accounts that had not been set up properly in the city’s system.
“We would call that non-revenue water loss. We don’t know where the water had gone.”
The city is also responding to leaks quicker. “That has also improved our water loss.”
Since 2009, the equivalent of three billion litres of water has been saved by reducing losses.
Monkman said since Lacombe gets its water from the Red Deer-based regional system any efforts they make to reduce water loss benefits the entire system.
“If they reduce their water loss that helps us out because that means we don’t have to send them as much water.”