ThisWeek CW 09/06/2012
http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/canalwinchester/news/2012/09/04/canal-winchester-repairing-water-line-breaks.html
Water line repairs may cause residents some brief inconvenience but Canal Winchester city officials say the work will save taxpayers money in the long run.
Water Reclamation Manager Steve Smith and his crew found another water leak last month, this time near the intersection of Gender Road and West Waterloo Street.
“We’ve done more water collection work and found another small leak under the new shopping center at Gender and Waterloo that will save us a few million gallons of water a year,” Smith said. “We managed to find that leak through a visual inspection of the manhole.”
The loss of water from the leak was similar to leaving a garden hose running, according to Smith, which is the equivalent of about five to ten gallons of water a minute.
“Add that up and that’s about 2.5 million gallons a year, which is equivalent to five operating days for us, so repairing this is a good savings,” he said.
Recent attempts to fix a water line leak on Washington Street were unsuccessful because the pipe is so deteriorated, according to water department manager Gary Schmitt.
“There are some water main issues we have to look into,” he said. “On Washington, we used our normal process of putting a band on the main line in that section but it wouldn’t fix it, so it’s still leaking.
“We need to replace about 400 feet of pipe down there, which will be about a half-day inconvenience for possibly seven homes.”
The city is currently requesting bids for the Washington Street project and, according to Mayor Michael Ebert, hopes to have the repairs completed by this fall.
Schmitt said crews also located another leak of 300,000 gallons a month under Diley Road that he expects to have repaired in the next month.
Because of the hot and dry weather this year, Schmitt reported that water usage by Canal Winchester residents has been up by more than 200,000 gallons per day.
“We’re rated for a usage of 2 million gallons a day so we’re still well within that at 960,000 gallons, but the drought has created a significant increase in our usage,” he said. “Our normal average is closer to 700,000 gallons.”