Eastsound Water Users Update

 Purdue Water Levels and NEW SMART METERS!

— by Paul Kamin, Manager, EWUA —

Summer has long since passed. With it, so have most peoples’ concerns about the drought of 2015.  This is “out of sight, out of mind.”

Purdue Lake photographed Nov. 6, 2015 by Paul Kamin

It was just at the start of Nov. that Purdue reservoir began to show signs of recovering from the impacts of this summer’s drought.  Throughout Sept and October, the water level in Purdue continued to decline.  This is actually normal for Purdue and throughout the NW.   Even with the return of fall rains, water levels in Purdue do not begin rising right away.  It takes quite a bit of rainfall to “re-saturate” the ground and for run-off into the lake to begin again.

The below graph shows this year’s water level in Purdue compared to the historic average. The current water level of 13’ is just ABOVE the average, after a long summer of BELOW average water levels.   Hopefully, this weekend’s rain will trigger the beginning of the “normal” late fall refilling of Purdue!

Purdue Lake level graph from EWUA

 Cellular-Based Water Meter Replacement Pilot Study Underway.

 Since its inception in 1955, EWUA has always installed water meters as part of our service connections. You might take your water meter for granted, but even “green” and “progressive” communities such as Bellingham did not begin installing residential water meters until after 2012.

Eastsound Water has installed 19 “smart” water meters as part of a meter upgrade pilot study.  These new water meters have a cellular “chip” in them. They submit a daily water use report to both Eastsound Water and the customer (if you wish) via a cellular data signal.

This new system is already providing some impressive results.   Given Orcas’ notoriously spotty cellular service coverage, Eastsound Water staff were worried about these units’ ability to make a connection with a cellular network.  The pilot studies water meters test were deliberately located the in “poor cellphone coverage areas.” Surprisingly, the meters have been 100% successful in reporting in everyday.

The new water meter’s leak detection abilities are also exciting. Each morning, staff check the status of the water meters. Today the system is reporting 2 leaks out of the 19 services that are being monitored.  Few homes use water every hour of the day.  This service has a 6 gallon per hour leak [which] equates to less than 0.1 gallons per minute.  It is small.  Our existing meters cannot detect water use this low   HOWEVER, this leak will get worse. They always do.

Identifying leaks quickly can save a significant amount of water, and help protect members from shocking water bills. These new meters can identify a leak within hours of it occurring.  With EWUA’s manual meter reading system it could be weeks or months before a leak is identified. EWUA is conservatively projecting over 1 million gal per year of water savings. That could [serve] 20 homes for an entire year.

Better yet, each member can request that their water meter send them an email or text message when a leak is identified. This new system also allows members to view their daily, weekly, monthly and annual water use for either a website or a smartphone app.

This pilot study is planned to extend to the end of the year.  The EWUA Board is considering system-wide deployment of these new “smart meters” in 2016.  This would make Eastsound Water the first water system in the State with this capacity.

More updates will follow. Comments welcomed at pkamin@rockisland.com