Livingston Begins Work To Locate Water Leaks

Livingston crews will get to work immediately to assess leaks in the city’s water system.

That after receiving a letter from the Tennessee Water and Wastewater Financing Board. The letter outlined excessive non-revenue water loss of 20 percent or greater during 2019.

Consulting engineer Greg Davenport said his data shows a large difference exists in the amount of water pumped and water purchased.

“What I plan to do is try to break your water system up into zones,” Davenport said. “Hopefully put in some flow meters to show where the water is moving from location. We can look at those flow meters between midnight and four o’clock in the morning.”

However, Davenport said this will need to be in tandem with city water employees, due to their knowledge of the water system. Livingston Utility Manager Jerry Kennedy said crews will begin checking meters for leakage indicators Tuesday.

“Have a two-man crew go inside every meter we’ve got,” Kennedy said. “Which that’s active meters, inactive meters, everything and that’ll tell you most of the time if there’s a leak on that line or not.”

Davenport said that locating leaks is not an exact science, but areas can be narrowed down and city crews can use their knowledge to find leaks. Davenport said he does not want the city to think he’s suggesting they start on major capital projects to fix the leaks.

“We’ve tried to do it by doing capital projects in other places and it just didn’t work out,” Davenport said. “I just can’t advise you to go forward with that. Now, if we find a bunch of line that needs replacing, we’re gonna bring that to your attention. The only way to fix that’s with dollars, you all know that.”

Mayor Curtis Hayes said the city worked last year to remedy leaks in the downtown area. Hayes said they found roughly 30 problem areas. Davenport said the 2020 data still shows issues.

Davenport said the Tennessee Water and Wastewater Financing Board will want information on the leaks from Livingston by April 2.

“We’ve got some time, I mean they gave you about two and a half months just to put it together,” Davenport said. “I doubt you’ll hear from them in a timely manner, and if you give them everything that they need in here, and you actually act on that, which is what I expect the city would do. Then I would expect that they will return favorable results. Ultimately, they’re gonna want to see that percentage go down, they’re not gonna care about try, they’re gonna care about results. I think you’ll have a grace period, I just can’t tell you exactly what that is.”

Davenport is president of J.R. Wauford and Company.