Page 63 - Water Loss Control

What is Necessary to Contr ol the W ater Loss Pr oblem? 45

The Australian water industry has adopted the methodologies of the International
Water Association’s Water Loss Task Force as an organizing concept for much of this
work. The adoption of this framework has institutionalized by the fact that key water
industry membership organizations such as the Water Services Association of Australia
(WSAA) and the various water directorate organizations have made available software
tools and information packages which use the water balance and terminology promoted
by the IWA thereby creating this as a de facto Australian standard.
Regulatory reform has been led by the Queensland Government which requires all
water service providers in the State of Queensland to
• Prepare a system loss management plan using IWA methodologies (water losses
are to be valued at the retail sale price of water)
• Implement cost effective water loss management actions (e.g., active leakage
control, pressure management, etc.). Cost effective actions are defined as any
activity that will achieve a payback in less than 4 years.

This regulatory regime is now being reviewed by other state governments and com-
monwealth government regulators and it appears likely as if it may form a model for
future regulatory action by government agencies in Australia. The Australian Govern-
ment (the Commonwealth) through the Australian Water Fund has provided govern-
ment funding to a number of key trial water loss management projects. The recently
elected federal government (December 2007) made water loss management an election
issue through the announcement of a major national funding package for water loss
management. This national government funding has been reinforced with a number of
state governments providing significant funding to assist water authorities to imple-
ment water loss management activities (In Queensland, one of the key drought ravaged
areas, this state subsidy is 40% of overall project costs).
Thus the regulatory drivers and funding drivers are pushing the water industry in
Australia to implement some very large water loss management projects. Most notably
in South East Queensland water service providers are currently working on a system
to implement DMAs and pressure management in communities currently servicing
more than 2 million consumers. The savings that are being achieved through these pro-
grams are still significant despite the relatively low levels of losses prior to project
implementation.
Since 2003, Gold Coast Water has engaged Wide Bay Water Corporation to imple-
ment one of the largest water loss management projects in Australia. The savings that
have been achieved by this program are as follows:

Consumption (System Input Volume)
Total system input volume declined by 22.22% from 73,750.7 to 57,361.8 ML/year.
Overall demand has reduced from 1640 to 1091 L/conn/d, reflecting an overall
reduction in demand of 549 L/conn/d.

Real Losses
The unit value for current system leakage has dropped from an initial 164 to 46 L/conn/d.
(It should be noted that as a result of this performance Gold Coast Water is technically
exempt from the preparation of a system loss management plan as the act exempts large
water service providers if their real losses are less than 60 L/conn/d.)