Water losses lead to discussion of possible citywide changeover
Benicia is fifth in the San Francisco Bay Area in cutting back its water use, “settling in at 30 percent” in its conservation efforts, Scott Rovanpera, water treatment plant superintendent, told the City Council on Tuesday night. But more needs to be done, he said, particularly in addressing the city’s so-called 25 percent “lost water.”
Rovanpera said more significant drops in consumption have occurred in Benicia from time to time. For instance, compared to the baseline year of 2013, residents used 37 percent less water; and because consumption in May 2013 was high, they managed a 43-percent cutback two months ago.
Which led Tuesday to a discussion of the city’s lost water. The 2014-15 Solano County Grand Jury said Benicia treats 25 percent more water than it sells, and it urged the city to address its inaccurate water meters.
Public Works Director Graham Wadsworth said the city has 9,800 meters among its residential, institutional, commercial and industrial customers. While the useful life span of water meters is 15 years, 60 percent of Benicia’s meters are older than 20, he said.
Moreover, their accuracy declines as meters age, and eventually, they quit reading water use altogether, Wadsworth said.
He said a typical household uses 300 gallons a day, and he suspects Benicia’s meters aren’t accounting for all the water delivered to those homes and other customer sites.
City employees looked at the situation in 10 other cities and learned that Benicia isn’t unique.
In cities that have a typical replacement schedule of 15 years, employees often give meters a “bench test” to determine whether the devices are starting to lose their accuracy.
Wadsworth said about half of the cities in the Bay Area have switched to Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) that not only reads water consumption more accurately, but makes real-time data available to water agencies and their customers.
The system is similar to the “smart meter” devices now used by Pacific Gas and Electric, which enable the utility to read meters remotely.
In Benicia, a crew of five traveling to every customer takes two days to read all the city’s meters. Sometimes meters need to be re-read, requiring additional trips, Wadsworth said.
He said replacing mechanical meters with AMI devices would have multiple benefits. First, since employees won’t need to drive around, the city could reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Because the meters would read consumption accurately, they’d bring in more revenue, he said — and the change also would encourage more water conservation, as customers realize how much they actually are using.
Moreover, bills could be sent once a month instead of every two months, he said.
The system would let the city find leaks more quickly, which would allow for quicker repairs, Wadsworth said. Since crews no longer would be making trips to read meters, they would have time to make those repairs and attend to other service calls.
As for possible contractors, he said the city has received statements of qualification from five firms and narrowed the field to three — Siemens, Johnson Controls and Ferguson — from which he wants to get bids.
Cost to replace meters is estimated at $3.3 million, and for the AMI system is estimated at $1.7 million. Meters, set above ground, and the AMI devices, which are placed underground, would be installed simultaneously, Wadsworth said.
However, that expenditure isn’t in the city’s current two-year budget or available in its reserves, Finance Director Karin Schnaider said, so potential contractors will be asked to furnish the city details about optional financing when they respond to the city’s request for proposals.
Armed with that information, she said, “we can go shopping,” because the city isn’t limited to what the applicants offer.
Mayor Elizabeth Patterson urged contract applicants to think beyond loans and, if possible, tie their financing plans to energy conservation.
One resident, Greg Gartrell, said the city also needs to check which water users have no meters, particularly in Benicia’s Industrial Park.
He said some tenants presume their landlords are paying the water bills while the landlords believe the tenants pick up the tab — and that in some cases no one is being billed because there is no meter to read.
One option he offered is to “shut off the water and see who complains.”
Once the new meters are in, if the city’s “lost water” plateaus or doesn’t decline, then the cause may be leaks, Wadsworth said.
And city employees are addressing that, Rovanpera said.
The city’s maintenance division is repairing leaks that have been found during a survey of Benicia’s water pipes, he told the Council.
“Another way to save water is to stop losing it,” Rovanpera said.
While old meters can be blamed for part of the discrepancy, he said leaks might account for half of the amount.
Benicia has an old water distribution system, but it also has high water pressure, he said, promising that leak detection would continue as “a constant program. We’ll try to fix every leak.”
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So the first benefit the city states is a reduction in greenhouse gases? Aren’t these teams using the city’s hybrid cars to make their regular rounds? What about the savings from not needing a meter reading team anymore? Shouldn’t the taxpayers benefit by eliminating unnecessary meter-reading jobs? What about the increased cost of generating monthly bills? How about the increased time cost to customers in using the city’s pathetic online bill payment system monthly instead of bi-monthly?
Sounds like yet another way for the city to spend money to pass cost onto rate payers rather than using current staff to fix existing problems. Anyone remember that leaking hydrant in the industrial park?
Unfortunately the article does not reflect the discussion in its entirety (and misquotes me). In fact the greenhouse gas item you refer to was way down the list of benefits, which focused on customer satisfaction and benefits: Accurate billing means those with accurate meters no longer subsidize those with bad meters, ability to signal a leak quickly so the customer can fix it immediately rather than finding out 2 months later when the enormous bill arrives, ability to check your use in between bills…there was a long list, all directed for the consumer.
As to my quote, I stated that finding unmetered users is hard, and one way an agency finds them is when working on the system (meter replacements or main repairs) when the water needs to be shut off–the agency gets complaints from people not alerted in advance because they are not in the system. I did not suggest going around shutting down mains just to find unmetered users; rather I suggested when mains are shut down, that is a time one can find unmetered users.
Greg, I don’t think the city needs to incur the expense of monthly billing,. Your concerts about a leak remaining undetected for two months can easily be remedied by emailing users of unusual water usage. If the system is online like PG&E’s smart meters, then it would be easy to write code to do this automatically. Even the users could interact here by setting parameters that would generate an email when water usage exceed an amount they specify.
Sam, as I heard it, that was the point of the AMI system: they can notify people of leaks quickly, and customers can get their usage online as often as they like (not just through bills). . The AMI system allows monthly billing, but there was no decision to go to that.
I am not sure how Benicia does the bimonthly billing. Other agencies stagger it, so not all the bills go out to everyone at one time (half in one month, half in another for example). And as more bills go out by email, costs of billing go down. While it was reported that the system would allow monthly billing, I did not hear a recommendation to do it and there certainly was no action taken to endorse monthly bills. Like I said, the article did not reflect the discussion in its entirety.
it appears the city is in for another water rate increase if allowed by law. This city prides itself on getting grants. No problem with a Grant for a Bus Hub in the industrial park. The Mayor appears to want a mandatory replacement of the non-compliance toilets with a budget increase i assume to help the the non-compliance residents make the changes. Now what about the waste water./sewer issue also. Does that not need plenty of upgrades also. I believe the way to do this is with bonds paid for out of the city budget with no rate increases.. I do not like it but it is the city responsibility to do so.. The council needs to stop talking about econ dev and starty Doing it. The Seeno property should be a priority and aggressively persued. If we do not start now with econ dev and our infrastructure upgrades we are going to open the way for another CSC group that will want the residents pay for it. The residents have had it on this tax stuff. You got your 1% now do your job and resolve this water issue. Aggressive econ dev will resolve the problems. Remember this city is looking at this same group to stop Crude By Rail and make an enemy out of Valero which they are not. Move quickly and first before this group gets envolved in city council elections and anti big business issues. It is hapening right before your eyes. Open your eyes. Get very aggrerssive on econ dev or you are going to be looked at very funny by the residents. On this issue the residents are not ignorant or do they have their heads in the sand. You do remmber those comments I hope.
Maybe one of these days we will have a council meeting that is more exciting than replacing low flow toilets. That is abou ast exciting as flushing one.
Maybe one of these days we will have a council meeting that is more exciting than talking about low flow toilets. That is about as exciting as flushing one.