Over the past 25 years, San Antonio Water System has successfully secured new water supplies for our growing city from seven different sources. To manage these diverse supplies, SAWS has also created world-class water conservation programs to help make every drop count.
Rounding out the utility’s water stewardship efforts is a renewed focus on non-revenue water — sometimes called “water loss” — to ensure SAWS continues to deliver sustainable and affordable water services for generations to come.
As the name implies, non-revenue water is water that is produced or received but never billed to a customer. And while it does include water “lost” through main breaks and leaks, it also involves authorized, beneficial uses such as firefighting, hydrant and pipe flushing for health and safety, and water for sewer system cleaning.
It also includes “apparent” losses from unreported use such as water theft, and even measurement issues such as inaccurate meters or data errors.
Water loss caused by aging infrastructure is not unique to San Antonio. Cities across the U.S. are struggling to find new ways to measure and reduce water produced but not delivered. SAWS is at the forefront of these efforts.
“Because our 8,000 miles of water pipes are buried underground, solving the problem of breaks and leaks will take time and it will be costly,” said Jeff Haby, SAWS vice president of production.
“The good news is we have already redoubled our efforts on leak detection and repair, and our new ConnectH2O electronic meters are making sure customer use is measured more accurately than ever.”
Haby said the SAWS Board of Trustees has made this program a priority, and SAWS staff is rising to the occasion.
“Our commitment, as outlined in SAWS’ long-term Water Management Plan, is to reduce non-revenue water by 50% per connection by 2035,” he said. “We’ve already been at this for 10 years, and we’ve been exploring many promising new technologies that can help.”
To learn more about SAWS’ Non-Revenue Water Program, visit saws.org/stewardship.