For years, a water leak in the American Flag subdivision of Park City has baffled the water department. With new technology in place, a water leak on Centennial Circle has been fixed, saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and dollars.
Park City’s public utilities department has focused its efforts for two years to reduce water lost due o leaks. In 2017, 27% of the water produced in Park City was, basically, going down the drain.
The city has a goal to reduce water consumption by 25 % by the year 2025, adjusting for population, using the year 2000 as the starting point. The city also has an energy goal of net-zero carbon emissions for municipal operations by 2022.
Pumping water is the city’s largest single use of electricity, so by fixing the leaks on Centennial Circle, City Manager Matt Dias says the city is saving a boatload of money, and water.
This particular area, for a variety of reasons, has experienced a significant amount of water loss in our system and we’ve been chasing leads over several years to create a more efficient system and finally we were able to detect a rather large leak or several leak area where we were able to... um ... you know, we have a 140 mile system overall but we were able to reduce from this one area almost 300 gallons a minute - an almost $200,000 a year savings to the taxpayers,” Dias said.
While the city knew there were water leaks in the Centennial Circle neighborhood, Water Resource Manager Jason Christensen has previously told KPCW, the neighborhood was built on fractured rock and the rock was pulling the water away as quickly as it entered the ground – so no leaks could be detected. Usually a water leak will pool to the surface.
The city replaced water lines in the neighborhood this summer and while they saw a substantial reduction of water loss, they were still losing 60- gallons a minute. Then, a failed valve was located, which took the remaining water lose in the zone close to zero.
Dias says there are several other water leaks throughout town that are on the list to be fixed.
“We have areas in Thaynes, and areas in Old Town and Park Meadows and we have an annual program that prioritize based on the size of the water loss or maybe what other types of construction is taking place in those neighborhoods where we can take advantage of streets that are already open or streets that are being repaved,” Dias said. “This area in particular we’re talking about was one of the worst and I’m very glad we were able to resolve it.”
In Park Meadows, the city has identified more than 390-gallons of water per minute being lost in that neighborhood.
