City begins addressing water leaks

The City of Troy has been meticulously measuring the amount of water being lost on a monthly basis from leaking pipes since April 2009. The results were alarming.

Troy is losing, on average, 75 to 85 percent of the water it pumps every month.

In October the city pumped 19.598 million gallons and only 3.893 million made it to metered usage. That means 15.704 million gallons of clean water was wasted last month alone, 80 percent wastage.

With numbers like that, Troy must be paying absurd water rates, right?

Well, not exactly. Dave Norman, city public works manager, estimates the cost of the extra water averages out to 80 cents per person, per month, or $9.60 a year.

“What does water cost us? Nothing,” Norman said. “It’s all relative. The 80 cents was extra electricity to pump it out.”

The monthly rate for Troy residents is $34.50. During the winter that guarantees users 6,000 gallons at that rate (it is 10,000 a month for the summer). For every 1,000 gallons past that, users pay 93 cents.

Even with the small monthly cost to users, leaking water mains aren’t helpful to anyone in Troy, and the city hired a Sandpoint, Idaho, company, Leak Masters that does sonic readings to locate possible leaks.

The detectors found two “hot-spots” and 13 other possible leak areas. 

On Wednesday morning, the Troy city crew was looking into a large leak under the Stein’s parking lot.

“It sounded like a faucet running,” Norman said. “We estimated it was 25-40 gallons a minute. To put that in perspective, a garden hose on full blast is around 15 gallons a minute.” 

Dennis DuPuis, a city worker, was manning the backhoe that cracked into the pavement where the leak was expected.

Sure enough, as the teeth sliced through the asphalt and dirt, water came gushing out to fill the hole in the parking lot.

Norman estimated this leak was responsible for more than 1 million gallons of waste a month.

It was a disconcerting look at what has become a problem under Troy’s streets.

“There’s not one big leak,” said city foreman Dennis Countryman. “But several small ones. Small leaks can build up to a lot of gallons in a hurry.”

Troy’s pipes were laid in 1958, steel-dipped and wrapped in material intended to keep them from corroding. They were laid without bedding and just covered with whatever rock was lying around.

There lies the problem. The Troy city crew, responsible for the Stein’s leak, and TCI, a Libby company that will work on the other large leak in town, near Lake Creek Inn, have to replace the old leaking pipes. The rusty steel will be replaced with PVC pipe and laid in a bedding to keep the pipes’ life long.

The city of Troy has budgeted $50,000 toward water line replacement, according to City Clerk Tracy Rebo. 

But Norman said that the figures tell perhaps a scarier story than need be.

“It’s not like our water system is a bunch of swiss cheese,” he said. “The plan in the past was to progressively replace the mains. Clean PVC plastic pipes is ultimately our goal.”