Mustang's water loss adds up;
Growing district says loss rate is 6 percent
Denton Record Chronicle
12:14 AM CDT on Monday, October 9, 2006
By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe / Staff Writer
AUBREY — With tens of millions of gallons of water flowing through miles of lines, many of them small and aging, Mustang Special Utility Water District usually loses a little along the way.
Moreover, in the summer, the laws of physics, and human behavior, come into play.
While pumping 106 percent of its rated daily capacity in July, Mustang lost more than 10 million gallons through its system.
Mustang still pumps to longtime customers in the rural areas of northeastern Denton County. But in recent years, it has begun pumping millions more gallons to the thousands of people who have moved into freshwater supply districts along U.S. Highway 380 and in Celina.
Even though district staff had little explanation during a September board meeting as to where the lost water all went, General Manager Byron Gaines assured the board of directors, “we’re proud of our 6 percent loss rate.”
District losses also spiked in the summer of 2005, with more than 16 million gallons lost in July and 35 million in August last year, according to a review of data obtained through an open records request.
Gaines said Mustang’s loss rate compares favorably to other suppliers. The district installed electronic meter monitoring, which helps detect theft.
“When suddenly someone is using less, the system sends an exception report and we go check the meter out,” Gaines said.
Mustang employees also do the best they can to find and repair leaks, but with hundreds of miles of pipe, “we don’t walk every line every day,” Gaines said.
In fact, Mustang averages between a 2 percent to a 5 percent water loss in winter months, or when not repairing a leak.
Overall, water people don’t like to talk in gallons, but in percentages, he said.
In the past 18 months, no month came close to the relative efficiency of February 2005, when Mustang lost about 664,000 gallons as it pumped about 29 percent of its total capacity. On average, Mustang lost 5.9 million gallons each month in the past year and a half.
Around the state, experts agree that water suppliers need to change the way they count their losses, because it’s rarely an apples-to-apples comparison.
Nelissa Heddin, an analyst with Austin-based Water Resources Management, said a 10 percent loss for a small water supplier would mean a few thousand gallons and the cost associated with repairing the leak wouldn’t pay for it.
“But for a large water supplier, such as the city of Dallas, a 15 percent loss means millions of gallons and the cost association becomes greater,” Heddin said.
For example, water experts now recommend that suppliers calculate ratios of water lost per mile of main, Heddin said. That helps suppliers put a dollar amount on water losses and decide where to allocate resources.
Mark Mathis, head of the conservation division at the Texas Water Development Board, also said that monthly percentages are not a true indicator of what’s going on in a water system, since they cannot help water suppliers determine whether there is loss or theft in their systems, or if they have meter problems.
In fact, a new Texas law requires suppliers to collect data in a more sophisticated way so that the board can determine how to best direct its resources, including determining how it will issue future loans and grants for water development projects.
Mathis recently turned over a new round of data gathered this spring from water suppliers around the state, and the report is due back in December.
“With this new method, we’ll be able to break down the losses and associate them with a dollar amount,” Mathis said.
PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881. Her e-mail address is pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com.
WATER LOSSES
Mustang Special Utility District can account for some of the water it pumps but doesn’t bill to customers through losses such as specific system leaks and flushes. Here is a chart of monthly losses in gallons that district officials were not able to account for.
MONTH — GALLONS LOST
2005
January — 2,651,702
February — 663,557
March — 6,477,290
April — 2,156,961
May — 6,379,025
June — 1,786,075
July — 16,020,730
August — 35,331,632
September — 4,183,320
October — 4,650,978
November — 1,681,096
December — 1,212,792
2006
January — 1,950,704
February — 2,733,516
March — 2,021,639
April — 1,736,233
May — 2,971,743
June — 7,503,838
July — 10,479,520
Source: Mustang Special Utility District