Town pinpoints and repairs water leaks

(2/1) At the January 12 Joe Birch of Public Works briefed the Town Council on recent efforts to identify leaks in the town’s water system and fix them.

According to Birch, the leak detection effort was undertaken after staff raised concerns identified that the town’s water systems may be losing up to 100 thousand gallons of water a day, almost 1/5 of the daily total water production for the town.

Fluid Pinpointing Services, a leak detection company was contracted by Walkersville to complete the survey of approximately 41 miles of water mains. According the Birch, this is the first time the town has performed this type of survey.

The process utilized to identify links by Fluid Pinpointing involved workers walking the entire 41 miles with highly sensitive sound monitors that can detect the unique sound of escaping water from pipes buried deep underground. Once detected, the leaks where marked for town staff to bring in backhoes to dig down to the leaks and replace the leaking pipes.

Upon their investigation, it was discovered that six separate leaks. One leak was connected to a homeowner in the Discovery neighborhood, two leaks were coming from fire hydrants, two mainline leaks in Glade Town and Brashear’s Court and one leak along Pennsylvania Ave.

Birch described the completion of the survey as "a great success." The survey, originally budgeted for 10 days at $26,000, was completed in 4 days and for a total cost of $10,550. Birch said, "town staff would not have been able to detect the leaks on their own. The correction of the leaks [which did add up close to 100 thousand gallons a day], will reduce the town’s water production needs, which will directly resulting in lower water production costs to the town."

The leaks did not pose a threat to the quality of the water delivered to town residents, as the pressure in the pipes did not allow inflow of ground water into the system.

This leak survey was an unrelated project from two other water main projects happening at this time. A water main replacement happening on Pennsylvania Drive is set to begin work around the first week of February, and the Spring Gardens Water Main project is underway for approval and signature by the county.

If approved by the town council, Birch hopes to repeat the survey yearly to keep ahead of any future leaks and ensure the Walkersville water system is the most efficient in the county.

While the leaks were significant, they pale in comparison to leaks other towns are dealing with thanks to the relatively young age of the majority of the water lines in town. Emmitsburg for example who has some waterline that date back to the beginning of the 1900s is facing a three-million-dollar bill to replace just a fraction of the major problematic lines. Likewise, Taneytown is struggling to find and replace 1900 ere terracotta sewer pipes that is playing havoc with their wastewater treatment facility.