The Salt Lake Tribune E-edition

Leaky municipal systems

In a recent Public Forum letter, Grace Parkin urges us to be careful in our use of water, given the severe drought.

Commendable, but reducing domestic use (other than lawn watering) is essentially irrelevant in present circumstances. It makes up a very small proportion of total water use, and any serious strategy to make the state sustainable has to resolve the very complex issues surrounding agricultural use and water rights.

But one area where municipal use probably could and should be reduced is in eliminating leakage from municipal systems. The latest report I can find on line is the Utah State Water Plan for 2013, which includes the amazing statement : “Fixing water leaks has not traditionally been part of future water planning.” The report gave Salt Lake City data for 2003 (!) as showing leakage of 4.3 million gallons/day, “a very creditable performance for a utility that does not have an active leakage control programme.” Salt Lake City took action, and its water conservation plan for 2020 reported losses for 2016-2018 as averaging over 11% of production. However, that’s still significantly above the average reported in the State Water Plan (8.4%). For comparison, Singapore, which is vulnerable because it’s largely dependent on water from Malaya, reports losses around 5%.

I suggest that Salt Lake City Public Utilities needs to make us all aware of what it is doing, and what it hopes to achieve, perhaps by adding a quarterly bulletin in its monthly billings.

Richard Middleton

Salt Lake City

OPINION

en-us

2022-08-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://sltrib.pressreader.com/article/281681143663849

The Salt Lake Tribune