Methven’s water meter installation underway

The Team Reporter from The Press

From local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:

A council manager says it’s “difficult to quantify" how much water’s been lost because of infrastructure leaks in Methven until the meter implementation plan hits full noise.

Ashburton District Council's infrastructure services group manager, Neil McCann, said 160 of 1200 meters have been installed in a trial the council hopes will solve massive water losses in Methven.

McCann said to get the maximum value from any metering programme, it needed water meters on all connections.

“Only then can we determine where the water is actually going," he said.

“Universal metering will also allow council to calculate how much of the leakage is on the public network and how much is on private property."

The council believed there was an unaccounted water loss of 65% in Methven between 2019-20. It also reported that acoustic detection technology, where water leakages in burst or faulty pipes are heard and found without disrupting the service or breaking the ground, identified 51 leaks on public and private properties during one-off investigations in July 2020.

In its long-term plan, the council agreed to a $1 million trial of water meters in Methven, believing there were significant leaks in the region’s infrastructure.

Once the meters were installed and used to identify leaks, the information would also eventually be used to prioritise acoustic leak detection activities on the public network, McCann said.

“We have identified some leaks after installing meters and notified the property owners, who have attended to the leaks, so leakage will be gradually decreasing.

“It is difficult to quantify the amount at this stage.”