A community comes together to unearth the source behind the disappearance of thousands of gallons of fresh, pure, clean mountain water.
Situated on the west bank of Hood Canal and nestled against the majestic Olympic Mountains of Washington state, Seamount Estates is an idyllic vacation retreat and home to a population of about 50 retirees and seasonal residents. The community boasts a 200-foot beach complete with a boat launch offering mariners passage to the nearby Puget Sound. With alpine summits in the distance, holders of a diversity of moderately sized homes, small houses, cabins, and trailers enjoy rural tranquility in a park-like setting. Even owners of vacant lots here maintain them to retain prized beachfront privileges. When Herbert “Skip” Rand, circuit rider for the Rural Community Assistance Corp. (RCAC), first arrived in early summer 2005 to assist the new water board on management and budget issues, Seamount Estates represented a picture perfect coastal hideaway.
But something was missing. Thousands of gallons of fresh, pure, clean mountain water had vanished. By night and by day, nobody knew when it had begun or how much was lost. By the time Rand arrived, the community’s investigation had begun to zero in on an explanation.
“They had high electrical costs and suspected a leak,” says Rand. “While monitoring their source meters, they saw progressive increases in water consumption over the course of the year.”
The local community has one of the more unique, pure sources of fresh drinking water in the nation, unknown quantities of which were disappearing into the ground.
Clean Water for Free
The water distribution system for Seamount Estates is privately owned and operated by residents, and as Roger Ricker says, “The community would like to keep it that way.”
“We’ve got very good water here and very good water rights that we don’t want to lose,” says Ricker, a Seamount resident and treasurer of the water board, the organization that manages and operates the water system. He says the water is sourced from Fulton Creek, which flows year-round from the Olympic Mountains. “We’ve got two good wells, and we’re only using about 10% of our water rights.”
Ricker says the water quality here is so good that it would be hard to find anyone who would be willing to pay for water, be it from a tap or a bottle. He adds, however, that water service to Seamount residents is not exactly free of charge. “We charge $200 per year in dues, which gives members unlimited water usage—along with beach rights.”
The system the water board operates is a Group A drinking water system comprising 151 connections, of which about 60 are active. The original piping infrastructure dates back to the early ’70s, and the system is governed by Washington State Department of Health (DOH) rules for Class A groundwater.
Healthy Set of Goals
According to Rand, at the time of his initial visit to Seamount, the Washington State DOH was developing three major guidelines mandating water efficiency for small water systems. These guidelines included reporting, public notification, and programs to ensure wise use of water.
In anticipation of these new state guidelines, and with the realization the water distribution system was not performing at peak efficiency, the citizens and water board of Seamount began monitoring the system’s performance.
Connections
With the assistance of Derek Zock of Evergreen Rural Water of Washington (ERWoW) and Rand, Seamount started down the punch list of issues specified by state regulations. According to Zock, who provided technical assistance to the project, “One of the major issues was significant water loss.”
Under the leadership of Tom Bowdish, president of the Seamount Estates Homeowners Association and chairman of the water board, an active campaign to upgrade the water system began. Bowdish enlisted the help of new resident and retiree Ricker. With his background in purchasing and accounting, Ricker was charged with the task of helping the water board generate the appropriate authority to run the water system in compliance with state regulations.
Over the past few years, Ricker says, he has been quite involved with the project, “I wrote the group’s water program for meeting the DOH requirements, and I have been coordinating a lot of the effort in that regard. It has been quite an education process.”
Volunteer Effort
As with many small communities, management of Seamount’s water distribution system had customarily been performed on an ad hoc basis, using local help. Ricker says that typically “you would have had a couple of older guys going out with a shovel, and if they found a broken pipe they’d probably put some kind of patch on the line and cover it up.”
The combination of poor workmanship and aging infrastructure resulted in massive inefficiencies in the water system, which, Ricker says, the board recognized and set out to improve.
Ricker points out that much of the labor is still handled on a volunteer basis. However, the board does pay one resident, a retired lot owner who spent his early years as a handyman, to perform upkeep and maintenance on the system.
“If we have a power outage, Kenny, our handyman, is the one who goes down in the middle of the night and restarts the pumps. He keeps track of the system’s operation and has taken on the responsibility for inventory.”
Ricker says establishing the board has made it possible to bring more organization to the process.
“We set up a work order control program, as well as a cost control program on the different jobs, and we’re trying to keep our inventory under control.”
Leaks and Clues
“Electrical usage bounces around when you have a leak,” according to Ricker, who explains that fluctuations in power consumption are often the first sign of a leak. Ricker points out that because Seamount’s electric power is used exclusively to run the water pump, “if you see your power bill go up you know you’ve got a leak somewhere.”
Finding leaks became a kind of avocation for the board members and volunteers, says Zock, who provided technical assistance by joining in the search as circuit rider for the district. To find leaks in the system they installed valves to shut service off to individual branches of the service lines, enabling them to check the integrity of the piping section by section. “That’s how we found many of the leaks and brought them down.”
Rand explains, “We would go out at night and isolate sections and read them every week, looking for large increases in consumption when there was no demand.”
Ricker says the board began a program surveying all vacant lots for leaks. “If we find a leak on a vacant lot we put a corporate valve on it and shut that lot off until somebody decides to build there.”
Using a leak detector, Zock says, the team followed lines as best they could, although not all of the lines were charted. “While you can sometimes hear leaks through the ground, a leak detector works the best if you can physically touch the pipe or listen at the valve box, the hydrant, or anything like that. If we know where the main line runs, we can actually listen on top of the ground with the ground mic. If the leak is big enough you can actually hear it from the surface.”
On some of the lots the team found old valves that were rusted open, allowing water to run into the ground. In one case, they discovered a major leak where lines had been coiled up and capped leaving a valve on a 0.75-inch pipe running wide open.
Free Equipment
“Small systems just can’t afford to buy their own locating equipment or well transducers. A quality leak detector will cost about $3,500,” says Zock. “We typically use the higher end of the electronic leak detector.” Evergreen provides this equipment on loan to small water systems at no cost. “We have a pretty good inventory to bring with us to help the systems that don’t have that equipment.”
“I have an acoustical generator that can be used in conjunction with the leak detector,” Zock continues, emphasizing that the generator is especially helpful for tracing nonmetallic service lines, which sometimes lack trace wires customarily installed to help reveal the pipe’s location electronically.
“The acoustical generator allows us to locate the water line and listen right on top of the water pipe.
”In addition to assistance with leak detection, Zock says Evergreen can provide source meter testing equipment, well leveling devices, temporary chlorinating systems, and training tools (see sidebar).
Local Heroes
In one situation the team discovered a broken water line inside of a house owned by a member who was away at the time. “You could actually hear the leak from outside,” says Zock. “When we located the leak we were able to shut the water off at the valve box and then advise the homeowner that they had a bad leak inside. There was already a lot of water damage, but by shutting it off I’m sure that it helped save part of the house.”
Rand agrees, adding that the owners were very appreciative. “Seeing that meter spinning saved the house; that gave us a kind of hero status.”
Learning Curve
The state’s small water system budget program provides model administrative guidelines and operating procedures that small systems can adapt to their own circumstances. In fact, Bowdish and other board members from Seamount attended RCAC seminars to familiarize themselves with the application of these processes to water system management. Rand says, “As participants in RCAC seminars learn the techniques administratively, they can modify them to fit their own needs.”
Ricker, who also attended some of the seminars, says, “The quality of the training is top notch. The trainers are professional, and they know what they’re talking about.” Through the instruction, he says Bowdish and another resident have acquired Cross Control Specialists Certification, which allows them to independently manage activities in this critical area of operations. “We’re taking advantage of all the free seminars that are offered,” Ricker says.
Ricker recalls his fascination with the subject matter offered in the classroom instruction. “There was a general course on how regulations filtered down from the federal level to the state and then to the water districts and an explanation of why they were required.” Ricker says the training opened up a whole new world. “Most people don’t understand what goes on with the water and what the problems are.”
For instance, he says cross control was a complex issue, unfamiliar to most people but covered in the seminars. He explains, “Anytime you have a water leak in one of the lines and shut down the power to the pumps to do repairs, a vacuum can develop in the line, sucking water and any contaminants on the ground near the opening back into the line. This can lead to water-quality problems and potential health risks. That’s the second best reason for finding leaks.”
According to Rand, what board members lacked in technical expertise at the outset of the project they made up for in enthusiasm. “I taught the theory; once they got that they took off on their own. I’ve made three site visits and a few phone calls, and they’ve taken it from there.”
Ricker says, “It’s very easy to learn the requirements, and it doesn’t have to be costly.” But he adds, “It really takes somebody who is willing to make a commitment to coordinate the activities and do the things that need to be done to make the needed improvements.”
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Photo: Herbert Rand |
| Seamount board members and interested citizens |
A Second Life for Meters
According to the Washington State DOH, an accurate assessment of water loss can be achieved only by comparing the volume of water pumped from the source to the volume recorded at individual service meters. With that in mind, one of the requirements in the DOH final rule gives Group A water systems, such as the Seamount Estate Water Board, a 10-year deadline to implement meters on all connections. When the board got word of this requirement, it encouraged residents to voluntarily hook up to meters.
“We had people who didn’t want meters,” says Ricker, citing a fear among some residents that meters would mean usage fees. The board reassured residents this would not be the case; members would continue to receive water as a benefit of membership covered by their annual $200 dues. “Getting over that hurdle made it much easier for people to accept installing meters because they realized there would not be additional charges for usage.”
And the meters appeared. A Seamount resident who operates a fire hydrant replacement company was able to acquire older meters that became available as surplus because a nearby city was in the process of upgrading to newer remote-read meters.“
These were all good meters,” says Ricker. “We got them at low cost, and we’ve begun installing them with our assemblies for our lot owners.” Ricker does point out that lot owners are charged a fee of between $250 and $300 to cover the costs of the parts and labor for installation.
Residents and property owners are discovering the virtues of metering. “A lot of our tenants leave for part of the year. We had one trailer that flooded when a water line broke while the owners were away. The meters we’re putting in come installed with a check valve on them and a more positive turn-off valve so that owners can turn them off when they plan to be away. Meters give you a better shut-off when you’re away—that’s one of our selling points.”
From an operational perspective Rand sees another virtue in meters: “They are a wonderful tool for finding leaks.”
SPAN class=subhead>A Progress Report
“By finding leaks and repairing them, we were able to reduce our pump starts and our electric bill more by more than half. We are continuing with our meter installations to track water use better, and we’ve replaced a couple of our old fire hydrants that were old and leaking. We’ve fixed every problem we’ve found; we’ve capped off dead-end lines, put better fittings in, supported pipes that were poorly backfilled so they would not get punctured by stones.”
Zock says Seamount residents replaced components of their pump system with assistance from Evergreen. “I introduced them to technology that would allow them to replace external pneumatic pressure tanks with newer equipment utilizing a smaller water tank, and pump controls that would reduce the pumping cycle, increase positive pressure throughout the pumping cycle, and cut electric consumption.”
There has been a great deal of progress, says Ricker. The board not only has installed meters on 60 of the 151 connections; it also is in the process of testing the lines for leakage beyond the meters. In addition, last year divers cleaned Seamount’s 20,000-gallon concrete reservoir. Ricker cites two additional actions: “We’ve certified Tom Bowdish as a cross control specialist so that we can do our own approval for our cross control program, and we’ve hired Northwest Water Systems as our contractor-operator to do our water tests.”
Meter installation has also facilitated improvements to the water-quality testing procedure. Ricker explains that previously drinking-water-quality samples for the DOH were collected from the faucet of a residence or from a standpipe on a dead-end line. “We installed water-quality test ports with the meters. With DOH approval, we now have five test ports in the system.”
Looking to the Future
Losing water can have significant costs, according to Rand. In addition to electric costs, a faulty system can shorten the service life of pumps, and there’s the potential of water soaking a particular area causing a sinkhole, a slide, or personal property damage. Further, Rand says, “A leak represents an open hole in your distribution system and a direct link to cross connection in the event of a loss of pressure.“
We’ve got the system operating now and it’s relatively tight. Each time we find a problem we’ll schedule it for an upgrade, and we’re trying to do it out of current funds, and so far, we’ve been able to do that.” “One of our members is developing a long-range plan to determine whether or not we need an additional reservoir for fire protection. We know we’re going to have to replace some of the main lines, and we’re trying to do that a little bit at a time.”
Ricker says there have been costs, “but we’ve been able to put money in reserve, which had never been done before in recent years. We’re better able to maintain our system by becoming efficient.
“Everybody was surprised at the savings by just finding and fixing leaks. When you’ve cut your power bill down by half, you know you’ve cut your pump starts down and you’re not pumping water needlessly.
“Working with Evergreen and RCAC has been outstanding. They’ve volunteered a lot of excellent help in engineering, and we’re to work with them and bring the system up to standards. It’s going to be a lot cheaper to run if it’s kept well maintained, and that’s our goal. Water efficiency is not a one-time project but an ongoing effort.
”But water system operators also need to become aware of the rules and the complexity of running a water system. Rand says, “They need to remember a water system is a business, and they need to run it like a business.”
Meeting Goals
Zock has been impressed by the Seamount Water Board’s willingness to improve the system and its commitment to a common goal of meeting the state requirements. “Their motivation was just that they wanted to do the right thing. They’ve got a nice little area down there, with a lot of potential, and they take pride in what they have—they want to make sure it works as well as it should.”
Bowdish said of the system before the upgrades, “We were making the public utility district rich because of excessive electrical costs due to leaks.”
Now with those bills cut in half, Rand says Seamount Estates could be saving approximately $160 per month. He estimates improvements to the system of the kind being made by the water board could result in the savings of up to 40,000 gallons of water per day.
Seamount Estate’s water efficiency project had been in operation a bit over two years when Washington State’s new Water Use Efficiency Rule went into effect on January 22, 2007.
The rule, according to Rand, may be one of the most stringent in the nation and sets forth a number of mandates for small water systems: Develop a plan through a public process and enact measures to manage water use; reduce distribution system leakage to 10% or less; install service meters within 10 years, if not already installed; accurately account for water usage and leakage; and report annually on progress in using water efficiently.
With its proactive approach, commitment to goals, and community support, it would appear that Seamount Estates is well under way to meeting these requirements, and praise from Ricker gives meaning to the process.
“If nothing else, it saved the community a lot of money because we were pouring water into the ground and paying a power bill to do it,” he says.