OLDS — Water loss jumped in Olds' water and wastewater system during the first two months of the year compared to late last year.
The Town of Olds' infrastructure director Adrian Pedro outlined the figures during town council’s March 10 meeting.
“Overall, in 2024 the last four months, there was a downward trend in both water and wastewater (loss),” he said.
“Now moving on to 2025, we've seen an unfortunate increase in January.
“We've jumped from approximately 12.6 per cent on the water loss to about 30.4 and then on the wastewater side, jumping from approximately 19.8 to 27 per cent.”
Pedro attributed the increase in water loss largely to “additional leaks in the system.”
He noted that during the past couple of months, town staff dealt with four water leaks, a couple of which involved water mains.
However, Pedro said those leaks probably don’t account for all of the water loss.
“There are still a lot of unknowns in the system that we do need to work on and try to isolate those variables as we go,” he said.
On the bright side, Pedro said some numbers received recently for February indicate that total water and wastewater volume has declined.
“We are just waiting to receive our utility billing volumes to see what our percentage of losses are,” he said.
This year, as in recent years, the Town is working hard to cut down on its costly water inflow and infiltration (I & I).
I & I issues have cost the Town of Olds millions of dollars because the municipality is billed for that missing water.
A total of $1.8 million is slated to be spent this year to cut down on I & I issues. In June 2024, council approved an extra $400,000 to tackle the problem.
Pedro’s report contained a graph to illustrate I & I trends; one for water outflow and one for wastewater outflow.
“In all of 2024 particularly Q3 and Q4, these lines were relatively close,” Pedro said.
“What we're seeing in sort of the latter half of this quarter, (we’re) starting to see the difference between those two lines increase.”
Pedro said that suggests that there are still more leaks in the system.
He noted there was a particularly sharp spike upward on Feb. 21.
“Another issue for us to sort out,” he said.
Another graph illustrating rainfall versus wastewater volume in January and February showed all the lines converging and edging upward in late February.
Pedro said that shows that the town still has I & I issues, but there was some good news as well.
He said the increase was lower than in previous years, which shows that the huge cash outlay into fixing those problems is actually working.
