The Water and Power Authority loses more than a third of all water that is produced, exceeding the established target of 14.41 percent by more than twice, WAPA's director for water distribution on St. Croix, Don Gregoire, revealed during last week's presentation to the Public Services Commission. He stated that the figure stood at 37 percent and attributed it to a mixture of billing and actual losses.
PSC staffer Jim Madden told commissioners that an initial analysis performed by a consultant hired by WAPA and completed in 2015, determined that the water losses stood at 37 percent, but a second analysis to determine how to bring those losses down to the standard 14 percent was never completed by the authority.
"That gap analysis was pretty important in our view," Mr. Madden noted. He said that the findings of the initial study were "quite surprising, because just prior to that St. Thomas was looking like it had very low line losses in the 15-18 percent range, and WAPA was indicating that they would easily meet the 14% line loss [target]."
Noting that the PSC has not had any formal confirmation of the proposed prudent replacement of St. Croix's entire water distribution system, Mr. Madden told commissioners that "if that's really coming, then we're recommending that the commission request some information, some plan, some indication of what the timeline looks like to get all that done."
New transmission and distribution pipes, Mr. Madden said, would "go a long way to solve the water quality issues" currently being experienced on St. Croix. The PSC needs to examine the proposed plans, Mr. Madden said, "and look at the timelines and look at how real the timelines are." If they are not realistic, "you need to go back to a hybrid of looking at the gap studies, and seeing what it would take to bring these line losses down."
Contextualizing the waste, Mr. Madden explained that WAPA is "producing two gallons of water for every one you sell, not quite but close." All the water produced, whether it ultimately makes it to consumers or not, still needs "all the chemicals and the pumps and electric – all of it – which goes into selling the water."
Mr. Madden suggested that WAPA has not been taking significant action to address the water loss issue because the struggling utility company has been focused on more existential issues. "What was priority is surviving its cash-flow issues and its lack of liquidity and lack of funding," he said in response to a question from PSC Commissioner Pedro Williams.
However, in anticipation of the wholesale water line replacement, for which a timeline has yet to be established, WAPA plans to conduct a leak detection survey, using funds made available by the Department of Planning and Natural Resources. "I think that will be able to allow us to identify key areas…[where] we may have some water losses, but they may not be surfacing," said Don Gregoire, WAPA's director of water distribution for St. Croix.
Mr. Gregoire also noted that erroneous billing was the source of at least some of the recorded water losses, and told commissioners that WAPA was about 20 percent through the installation process of smart meters for consumers, "so that's going to automatically help us on the billing aspect [of water losses]."
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