Page 186 - Water Loss Control

160 Cha pte r Ele v e n

with well-established water audits, or those believing that unauthorized consumption
is excessive, the extent and nature of unauthorized consumption should be specifically
identified, as well as policy or procedural gaps that allow water to be taken without
payment. The opportunities for water to be stolen from the water utility are functions
of individual customers who either cannot or will not pay for the services they are ren-
dered. All utility systems are susceptible to the occurrence of unauthorized consump-
tion, and this occurrence is substantial for some.
A portion of the customers in any community may live with real economic hard-
ship, and the water utility should seek to strike a balance between service provision to
this group of customers and enforcement actions against those who can afford water
service but choose not to pay. A careful evaluation of utility policy is therefore necessary
to operate rationally to stem unauthorized consumption.

11.6 The Impacts of Apparent Losses
Because apparent losses under-record the volume of customer consumption, they gen-
erate two major impacts on water resources management:

• Apparent losses induce a degree of error into the quantification of customer
water demand, thereby impacting the decision-making processes used to
determine needed source water withdrawals, calculate the appropriate
capacities of water supply infrastructure, and evaluate conservation and water
loss control practices.
• Apparent losses cause water utilities to underbill a portion of the water
consumed by customers, thus a portion of the potential revenue is not
recovered.

Both of these impacts can be significant. If a high level of apparent loss exists in a
water utility, its recorded volume of customer consumption could be subject to a sig-
nificant degree of error. Consider a water utility that documents customer consumption
of 3.65 billion gal of water in a year [10 million gals per day (mgd)]. If routine water
auditing found apparent losses equal to 1 mil gal/d (10% of consumption) then actual
customer consumption during the year being audited was 4.015 billion gal, an addi-
tional 365 mil gal. Such a loss creates a distortion of the true customer consumption
volume; in this case under-stating it by 365 mil gal. Activities that rely on accurate cus-
tomer data are compromised by this degree of error. These can include efforts to evalu-
ate the success of water conservation programs, using consumption data to assign
demands in hydraulic models and evaluation of community drinking water require-
ments needed for regional water resource plans. Apparent losses therefore represent a
degree of error that is interjected into a wide range of analytical and decision-making
processes regarding water resource management. Given that the water industry in the
United States is highly fragmented, with many different sized water utilities existing in
any given region, the degree of error from apparent losses can be compounded by the
varying errors existing in many disparate water utilities. Gauging true customer needs
on a regional basis can be difficult without a reasonable assessment of the apparent
losses existing in the region’s water utilities.
From a financial perspective, apparent losses can exert a tremendous impact on the
water utility’s bottom line. Apparent losses cost utilities revenue, and can account for