Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 04/10/2014

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The City recognizes that conservation programs will help lower water demand, and thus extend the useful life of the water system improvements. Maintaining reasonable costs for their water system users is incentive to the City to continue conservation efforts and to find sources of unaccounted water. C. UNACCOUNTED WATER USAGE A City typically has a certain amount of water that is treated and pumped into their system, but cannot be accounted for. This is referred to as unaccounted water. The City of Ramsey should implement a program to estimate and reduce the amount of unaccounted water in their system. This program should include estimating the amount of unmetered water usages for the year. Examples of unmetered water usages may include flushing hydrants, swimming pools, ice rinks, city parks, cemeteries, garages, cleaning streets, and unmetered usage by contractors or farmers. The total amount of water metered for the year plus the estimated unmetered water usage for the year is the accounted water. The difference between the water pumped from the wells and accounted water is unaccounted water. If unaccounted water for the year is 10 percent of the total pumped or greater, the City should take measures to identify the source and reduce the amount of unaccounted water. Currently, unaccounted water varies from 3 percent to 20 percent of the water pumped in the system Depending on the type of soil and bedding that water lines are buried in, their depth, and the size of the leak, leakage may not beevident at the ground surface. The City may want to hire a firm to find leaks in watermains and hydrants if they have excessive unaccounted water volumes. The City has a meter replacement program and this program helps alleviate problems with meters that are old and not registering properly. City of Ramsey, Minnesota - M21. 34343 Page 111-2 Water Emergency and Conservation Plan Prepared by Bolton & Menk, Inc.