Good I guess. I guess since no one noticed for years then no one will notice the non leak.
City workers thought, “Damn, we use about 60 gallons more per day per person that the average city our size. Must be everyone getting the beach sand off them or something.”
You need to sip your water, people, so the leaks can have their fair share. /s
The government loves you and knows what is best for you.
The first sentence: okay, they found a leak, it is stunning that such a large leak went unnoticed.
The second sentence: does not even make sense. Back-flow devices to stop flooding, that would make sense. But back-flow devices to stop something that is not happening? What is the point?
This story makes one wonder how many millions (or billions) of gallons are leaking through decaying water main infrastructure across the USA.
This is also another indication of government mismanagement of a service which could be provided by a private company. A private company would be reconciling the water its customers are paying for with the water it is sending out through the system. A 3 million gallon per day discrepancy would be investigated, found, and plugged quickly by a private company.
Galveston was buying an extra 3 million gallons of water a day and didn’t know it? Wow, just wow. Galveston is not that big of a city and 3 millions gallons is a lot of water.
I live nearly by and I have to pay $40/month of 3,000 gallons. That equates to $40,000/day for Galveston or $1.2 million a month.
Yeah the city buys wholesale and I buy retail but still we are talking serious money.
Years ago a massive leak was found in a line leading to a plant that my company owned. After it was corrected they had to increase the water rates for everyone in the city.
3m gallons daily for years? No wonder the ocean levels are rising! /sarc
An open 10 inch pipe is not a leak and there would be obvious signs of erosion like a huge hole in the ground. Something is amiss other than the reporting.
The Mississippi River, the 15th largest river in the world, discharges 16,792 cubic meters (593,003 cubic feet) of water per second into the Gulf of Mexico.
Well, at least it was flowing into the storm sewers rather than the sanitary sewers.
Would have cost even more if all that water had to be treated as sewage rather than runoff.
Of course, Galveston is an old city. We had common storm/sanitary sewers at our house in the city of Cleveland until the late 90s/early 00s.
Interestingly enough, the residents on our street complained regularly over the 20+ years I lived there that we had a common sewer and this was causing basements to back up sewage whenever the storm sewers backed up. They were repeatedly told that they were crazy. Then, one day, the city tore up the whole street and replaced the common sewer with separate ones. Apparently record keeping wasn’t a priority at the city departments.
Luckily, we’re moving. So far, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone at the city that, if there was a common sewer since the turn of the last century, then all the houses have common storm/sanitary sewers feeding into that common line. I suspect that, one of these days, the city’s going to come through and mandate that every house have their lawn dug up and have separated sewer pipes installed, at the owners’ expense, of course.
A square tank of water 75 feet wide by 75 feet wide by 75 feet deep was leaking out EVERY DAY????
I would fire the engineer who monitors they system.
Did they never add up all the usage from the water bills and compare that to the total amount used? Seems that would be an easy way to find out if there are any leaks you don’t know about.
A little discrepancy would be acceptable, but 3M gallons a day?
That line is propaganda.
Anything weather-related is twisted to reference global warning. The devices are likely for flooding.
“Galveston water line leaked 3M gallons daily for years”
Over 2000 gallons a minute. That’s not a leak its a stream.
All these Years nobody noticed that the total Number of Gallons Billed to users was a little shy (LOL) of the total number of Gallons pumped through the System?
When the oceans rise and we all drown, well, now we know who to blame!