STARKVILLE – An internal Starkville Utilities audit shows the utility is losing 19% of its water to small leaks.
But that only accounts for less than half of the “water loss” the utility suffers each month.
Edward Kemp, general manager for Starkville Utilities, presented the internal audit findings Friday during a board of aldermen work session at City Hall. The audit showed that in both 2023 and 2024 the utility lost roughly 45% of the water it intended to disseminate to customers, either because it never made it to a meter, to a bill or even into the system.
With Starkville Utilities providing about 6 million gallons per day, according to Kemp, the “lost water” approaches 2.7 million gallons daily – about the same amount as four Olympic-sized pools.
“This is something we’ve been really hyperfocused on for the past couple months,” Kemp said. “Everybody has dug in on this and tried to figure out where the issues are. There is no roadmap for exactly how to determine this. We’ve had to design it as we go, and it’s been a very educational process that touches many departments.”
Starkville’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget registered 2023 water sales revenue at $4.8 million, with $5.3 million expected in 2024.
While Kemp acknowledged some of the water loss is costing revenue, he believes that portion is far less than 45%.
For example, the audit identified about 7% of the water loss coming from inaccurate well readings. Kemp said that is water the utility thought it was pumping into the system that it actually wasn’t.
“I don’t think it is fair to say at this point, with the information we have, that it’s all unaccounted for revenue,” he said. “… I don’t think … there’s millions of dollars in revenue we aren’t collecting.”
In October, the utility raised its base water rates by $3 in an effort to generate $600,000 more annually toward capital improvements.
How the water is vanishing
The audit began in March 2024, and it identified six possible steps where Starkville Utilities could be losing water.
The bulk of water loss identified came from non-revenue water volume, which found an average of 19% of its total water produced is lost to leaks and miscellaneous actions like tank maintenance and brown water flushes. Almost all of that non-revenue water loss came in the form of small leaks in distribution infrastructure before it hits customer meters, Kemp said.
The audit report says this is at the high end of industry standard, which ranges from 10-to-20% non-revenue loss.
One way the board of aldermen can reduce that loss is through neighborhood pipe replacements. Kemp said those efforts have been paused for months due to budgetary reasons as the utility focuses on larger capital improvements, and Ward 2 Alderwoman Sandra Sistrunk was already emphasizing the importance of resuming them before Friday’s meeting.
“I hope we’ll be able to get back to those pipe replacements,” she told The Dispatch on Thursday. “They have a (limited) useful life, and with those older neighborhoods a lot are getting to the end of those useful lives. Instead of trying to patch and repair, it’s terrific when we can go in and get everything updated in a particular neighborhood.”
The second-largest factor, water quantity produced, was a fraction of leakage volume. Attaching secondary instruments to double check the readings on its wells, Starkville Utilities found an average overcount of 6.9%, meaning it was sending out less water than it thought and skewing how much it expected to return in final totals.
Kemp told The Dispatch he already has a quote to replace Starkville Utilities’ seven well meters for $50,000 to $60,000, and once he gets a second quote he plans to present them to the board for approval during January’s second meeting.
Unmetered connections, like fire lines or emergency connections to neighboring water associations, were found to have caused insignificant water loss.
There were also no clues in Starkville Utilities’ historical evaluation of usage rates, Kemp said.
Metering and billing issues
Kemp said Starkville Utilities is exploring how much metering and billing issues account for water loss. It’s a more complex problem, he said, with automated systems involving many different steps across multiple departments.
Starkville Utilities has already scheduled a four-day training seminar starting Jan. 14 with Honeywell, the company that provides many of its automated monitoring components. It’s also looking to hire a data analyst to keep an eye on its live feeds and databases. Those personnel and workflow improvements would allow the company to more easily check its work and notice discrepancies faster.
Its proposed solution to meter issues is to split its meter repair team into a distinct department from billing, which Kemp said would couple with new meter technician hirings to speed up its meter replacements and repairs. Starkville Utilities is already in the process of auditing and replacing old meters, with all 4- and 6-inch meters done and 2-inch meter replacements yet to be started.
Those improvements are slated to be done in the next year or two, Kemp said.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said she hoped it could be accomplished in the next year, and applauded Starkville Utilities for the work it’s put in tracking down the discrepancies in its system.
“I want to give you guys the proper kudos for what you’ve done,” she said during the work session. “Until you did that assessment we didn’t know where we were, we were just rocking along. Part of what now comes with that is the difficulty of having to respond to the things we’ve learned.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
