2012 Session #4, Wednesday May 2nd

During this session we dealt with Articles 42 and 43 (among many others), financing repairs of our sewer and water facilities.

The discussion of these two articles revealed something I did not know, that I very much want to know more about:

27% of the water that comes into Arlington from MWRA simply "vanishes."

It disappears, never making it to a meter, never being accounted for.

I need to know more about this. If you're familiar with the issue and can enlighten us all, please post a comment, or just contact me directly.

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Update on Vanishing Water:

I’ve learned a bit more about this topic, and rather than just leave this ominous question hanging out there, I’ll share what I've learned:

A normal loss of water is considered to be around 15%. The losses we see are likely due to old pipes in need of repair, and to older meters that do not accurately measure all the water used.

The Town of Arlington pays a wholesale rate to the MWRA as the water comes into our system, then measures the water “captured” by meters, and bills residents an amount that allows the Town to cover the costs paid to MWRA, and other costs associated with operating our system.

So the bad news is that this sort of loss results in residents paying for more water than they actually use, (except in those cases where the meter isn’t actually recording all the water used).

In practice, for every 3 gallons of water measured, we are charged for 4 gallons of water used.

It is hoped that gradually replacing the older water meters will bring our 27% loss rate down a bit.

Ultimately, we’re going to have to spend a fair amount of money to fix this problem.

There is most definitely a point at which it costs more to obtain improvements than those improvements will result in savings.

How much? and at what point it becomes economical to really fix the issue, I still don’t know an answer to.

When I hear about this sort of thing, I worry, as we are not accustomed any longer to footing the bill for this sort of infrastructure. Eventually, one day, we're going to have to.