Because of its efforts to stop water leaks, the Town of Olds was selected to be a featured community in an Alberta Water and Wastewater Operators Association video project on water conservation. The videos were funded by a $2.
Because of its efforts to stop water leaks, the Town of Olds was selected to be a featured community in an Alberta Water and Wastewater Operators Association video project on water conservation.
The videos were funded by a $2.6-million grant from the Rural Alberta Development Fund to help the association share some of the innovations communities throughout Alberta are undertaking in regard to water, wastewater, watershed management and other topics.
"It was suggested to us that Olds had done something unique with respect to dealing with a leaking problem in their community," said John Voyer, executive director of the association.
The two- and five-minute videos, which show town staff explaining the municipality’s efforts at water conservation and how the town is striving to recover all the costs of water service in the community, were shot from September 4 to 6.
Currently, town water users pay the full cost of water use as water is passed from the Mountain View Regional Water Services Commission through the town to water users. The town is also recovering, through taxes, some of the depreciation of water-related infrastructure.
In order to reduce the amount of water wasted in the community, the town works to have as much water as possible flow through water meters, said Scott Chant, the town’s manager of utilities and public works.
Part of this process includes working to limit the amount of water lost through activities such as firefighting and hydrant flushing, as well as reducing the number of water main breaks and leaks, he added.
"If we can understand what (instances of un-metered water) are and reduce those, that narrows that gap of (water) we purchased to what we get back from the customer. The more leaks we find, the more water we can reduce, (the better)," he said in an interview.
The town purchased sensors for each household water line in September 2010. A sensor is attached to each water meter and measures sound from midnight to 4 a.m., detecting unusual vibrations throughout the water line and pinpointing where there might be a leak.
"We collect that data every two weeks. We then upload it to a website and there’s red, yellow and green symbols that come back. Red being there’s noise, something’s going on, yellow means it could be something and green means it’s silent and everything’s good," Chant said.
When the sensor system was first purchased, sensors were on every third meter in residential areas, but as new construction happens, every address is included in the system so that town staff can identify where a leak is happening. The town currently has about 1,475 sensors throughout the community and about 3,620 water accounts.
Chant said while the sensor technology is used widely in the U.S., not many municipalities in Canada use the leak detection system.
The videos outlining the town’s water management and leak detection systems are available at http://youtu.be/YugnCttDmaA and http://youtu.be/0aAKJJQRC04.
