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TO: Mayor Thomas J. Weisner
FROM: David E. Schumacher; Superintendent of Water Production
DATE: May 14, 2014
SUBJECT:
Resolution Authorizing a Professional Services Agreement for the Development of a Strategic Plan to Reduce Water Loss for the Water Loss Mitigation Task Force (for the Finance Committee of May 27, 2014)
PURPOSE:
To obtain City Council authorization for a professional engineering services agreement for the development of a Strategic Plan for water loss reduction with Black & Veatch Corporation Chicago, IL (B&V), in an amount not to exceed $ 91,000.00.
BACKGROUND:
The city's municipal water system began over 100 years ago and has evolved into a large complicated configuration. It currently consists of a lime-softening water treatment plant, two pressure zones, six finished water storage sites, one booster station, over 700 miles of transmission and distribution mains, individual customer service lines, over 48,000 customer meters, and meter reading and bill processing systems.
All water utilities suffer some measure of loss which can be classified as either "real" or "apparent." Real losses, which is water actually leaked from the system into the surrounding ground, inflate a system's operations and maintenance costs and causes unnecessary water withdrawals from source water resources. Apparent losses, which consist of customer metering inaccuracies, unauthorized consumption, and systematic data handling errors, cause water utilities to miss a portion of the revenue to which they are entitled since water reaches a customer but is not accurately registered for billing purposes.
The city considers the historical estimated amounts of water loss to be elevated and there is interest in pursuing ways to find and significantly reduce these losses. As such, the city has created a task force to investigate the issue. The Water Loss Mitigation Task Force (WLMTF) has been formed and is comprised of members from the Finance D...
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