Town Mysteriously Missing 24 Percent of Its Water

They have companies with special equipment to track leaks from on top the streets. They did that here a while back. I don't know what kind of equipment it is, but they found a lot of leaks with it. Half the water was leaking through cracked old lines, broken by frost movement of the ground over the years. They got them pretty well fixed.

I'm sure they can get a company to come there, it wouldn't be that expensive.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Please remove.

Personally, I think two different and independent topics come up in the thread... Municipal water missing and aquifers being used far beyond recharge rates.

The first one is sad, truly scary for the sheer scale of solution required (and hence, unlikely) and finally, the ultimate end result it takes no research to see coming some day. One segment or old network at a time. I did a big thread about it earlier this year and the numbers for water 'lost' to what amounts more to seepage on a collosal scale are just near impossible to consider.

Water, Water.....

That might help for some numbers to consider anyway. The ones being honest about it, and especially some very careful in measuring like England put loss rates at 24% of total, across the network. That is between Pump station and House meter. U.S. cities aren't much better..tho Houston was 12% as I recall, and San Diego was one of the best at around 5%. I'd love to know how the OP story town example had measured leakage?

The other is fracking, IMO.

Of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2011, three-quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55% were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found.

Fracking those wells used 97bn gallons of water, raising new concerns about unforeseen costs of America's energy rush.

Source: Guardian

Much of that unusable afterward, as I understand it? They get it all somewhere. Poor aquifers never knew what hit them. S/F

New England is very corrupt, that can be a reason.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

I confess. I did it. Being as excellent as I am is thirsty work.

I found it!

www.allmediany.com...

The authorities know where that water went. It went into fracking holes under the aquifer when they were drilling for Natural gas. Of course the authorities are in the pockets of the energy companies and just play dumb.

Does anyone else find the clustering interesting..
I mean.. WTH is up with Nebraska?!

Might be unrelated, but we have our water coming from a natural spring, which seems to be running low.
We have, in what used to be the barn, a spring that pours out of the stone wall and into a stone basin, and it has always been running and plentiful for the last 14 years we lived here, and for many years before us (the guy who lived here before was born in the house, stayed all his life and drank that water- for his whole 102 years!)

It has suddenly dried up completely!

You could say, yes, but it is August..... but we have not had a summer. We've had nothing but rain, everyday! Everything is green. It is not normal summer weather. With all that rain, we can't figure out what happened to the water!

Still investigating.... but it is interesting to see we are not the only ones.

My stepfather worked on these sorts of problems for developing world countries. The problem isn't the theft from the reservoir, it's after the water has been filtered, purified, oxygenated then pumped through the distribution network. Sometimes there are leaks. The only way to find these is to either place flow-meters on every end of every junction. If there is a leak then the readings on different ends of a pipe will differ. Then they also look at the usage of every home. They discovered that brothels had a particular high usage of water Then there is always the possibility of unregistered or forgotten about segments of the water network.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Great story, thanks for sharing. Gotta love a proper mystery although i suspect, as others have said, lack of maintenance is the main culprit. Aren't the water pipes is many areas well over 100 years old?

Is it not also possible that water supplies are being tapped? (like with electricity, etc). Not sure if that is really possible but i am sure some enterprising scrote somewhere has the wherewithal to do this. If not individuals then definitely corporations!

With what's going on in Ferguson the elites are stocking up their underground cities

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Ummmm... I think the town name explains it clearly: Waterloo

Water (means water) loo (means toilet)

Waterloo = water down the toilet LOL

Just Joking... Interesting article

Could it be some type of natural environmental process or phenomenon occurring ?

leolady

a reply to: Restricted

I agree. Could we be seeing the pangs of Mother Earth.

leolady

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

I think that the TPTB that are building DUMB bases for their survival and reconquest of Earth in a post apocalyptic future have come across the devil and/or inhabitants from hell.
They need the water to put out the hell fires and make it more hospitable for their families

OR

they're stealing the water and storing. I know they print fiat money and can pay for it...but its probably their sense of humour saying...haha we control everything but lets steal their water and F'ck with the auditors minds.

There is always the chance their flow calculations/equipment or storage calculations/equipment are off. Maybe they never had as much as they thought they had in the first place.

a reply to: elementalgrove
No way, who knew?

That reminds me of this thread. www.abovetopsecret.com... Maybe it's fuel for their ships, LOL.a reply to: karmicecstasy

Having worked in the Water/waste water instrumentation field, I have a theory on this. Bad calibrations will account for lots of lost water. The devices that measure flow are quite touchy at times. With water at a plant, the outflow water is measured through a venturi and differential pressure is used. Usually, the measurement device has the option to be used in linear, or square root form. If the wrong choice is made, the calculations will be wildly different than actual.

That's not to say that there isn't a massive leak or some shady business tapped into a main flow line, just that before I invested lots of manpower and time in looking for my water (that usually cannot disappear without making a huge mess) I would ask for some double checking to be done on the flow calculations.

I do a good bit of residential plumbing, and since the meter is in the house and provided by the water department, the possibility to steal or lose water on that end is pretty great.

There's often a good 100 feet of water service line between the curb and the house that is before the meter, so if you "found a way" to tap into it and not get caught, that water wouldn't show up on your bill. But if you got caught I'm sure you'd be in major trouble.

Probably what's even more common is aging water service lines, bad installations, stuff like that. There's enough water pressure coming in from the city that even if you are losing a bit, your house will probably be fine unless you're really using water to the limit, which very very few people do. Your yard is big so an underground water leak could show little or no symptoms at all, and go on undetected for years.

It wouldn't be much water per house, but multiply it by a few thousand cases, 24h a day, year after year.... It'd add up I think.