Drop by drop,
the city of Apopka is slowly finding more of its missing millions of gallons of municipal water.
Apopka still can’t account for millions of gallons of lost water every month, but it’s finding more every day.
After an audit last fall revealed Apopka wasn’t sure where it piped 750 million gallons of water, a two-person city crew began feverishly replacing so-called “smart” water meters that read “zero” used by hundreds of residential customers.
The audit by consultants Woodard & Curran concluded the city had lost about 26 percent of the drinking water distributed in 2016 by its water utility — enough to fill 1,136 Olympic-size pools — which amounted to $1.2 million in lost water revenues. But the water loss plunged to 17 percent last month, a hopeful sign, said Kevin Burgess, the city’s assistant public services director.
“We’re making progress one meter at a time,” Burgess said.
Apopka’s water-tracking challenge is not unique, according to wateronline.com, which tracks drinking-water issues and has reported on similar highvolume water losses. A report on wateronline.com said an audit of the Kansas City, Mo., water system found it could not account for a third of the 28 billion gallons of treated water pumped into its distribution system in 2015. The 9.15 billion gallons of non-revenue water was enough to fill nearly 14,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.
Unaccounted-for water, also called non-revenue or “ghost” water, is sometimes blamed on system leaks, waterline breaks and theft.
Apopka, which treats and distributes 3 billion gallons of water annually to a population of 51,500, has focused on its faulty or failing smart meters. The city plans to replace all 22,200 in its system over the next few years, an effort estimated to carry a price-tag of about $4.6 million for new longer-warrantied water meters, radio-transmission equipment and other hardware.
City administrator Edward Bass said Apopka leaders will figure the replacement-meter expense in its upcoming 2019 water-rate study, a review conducted every three years.
He could not say if a hike will be needed.
“It would have to be reviewed,” he said. “But right now, the meter change-out is generating [water] revenue we weren’t getting before.”
Apopka Mayor Bryan Nelson said he didn’t believe the city would have to raise rates for the meter upgrades.
The city’s consumptive water-use permit with the St. Johns River Management District says “unaccounted for” water cannot exceed 10 percent.
St. Johns spokeswoman Danielle Spears said the agency sampled audits from a handful of Central Florida cities with smart water meters — including Casselberry, Ocoee, Sanford and Winter Park — and each showed less than 10 percent water loss.
Smart meters, introduced in Orange County’s second-largest city in 2007 at a cost of $3 million, feature technology designed to read devices that track the amount of water used at a home or business. Those figures are then transmitted via radio frequencies to city computers, which tally a customer’s monthly water bill.
The meters were supposed to improve water-billing accuracy and save money by reducing the cadre of meter readers who gathered billing data manually by visually inspecting the meters. When the city used humans to read meters, typically the amount of unaccounted-for water was calculated at about 2 to 4 percent.
A state-mandated audit in 2014 showed Apopka’s percentage had risen to 9.9 percent.
That was troubling because it is more than double the amount of lost water allowed under the permit Apopka uses to draw water from the Lower Floridan Aquifer.
High rates of unaccountedfor water often signal breaks or
leaks in water lines. Apopka has 360 miles of pipe. “We are communicating with them about the 26.1 percent loss,” Spears said in an email about the issue months ago. “The rule also says that when it’s over 10 percent they must do things like
conduct a meter survey, leak detection, etc.”
Apopka’s water system assessment, performed by a consultant for a $20,000 fee, was prompted by complaints from customers upset about erratic swings in their water bills, which possibly were related to malfunctioning meters.
But some customers have complained about higher bills since the
city replaced old meters with new ones. “We get a lot of calls now after new meters are installed,” Burgess said. “The old meters were either not reading [water use] at all or reading low. But water customers are getting billed now for what they’re actually using.”
Though Apopka was among the first in the region to switch to smart meters, the city didn’t routinely test
them for accuracy or have a replacement program.
The Orlando Utilities Commission finished installing 150,000 smart water meters in 2015 to help catch leaks and give customers more up-to-date information about their water use.
Experts say all utility systems, no matter how modern, lose some water.