The Town of The Blue Mountains is passing the work of loss prevention in its water system to Smartball.
At its committee of the whole meeting on August 27, council approved a pair of measures recommended by staff to help find and fix leaks in the water system and infiltration into the sewage system.
On the water side, council approved a staff plan to sole source a contract to Pure Technologies Limited to inspect watermains in an effort to find leakage in the system.
Allison Kershaw, the town’s manager of water and wastewater services, reported to council that the town’s water system lost just over 24 per cent of the water it produced in 2023. That number is actually down from 2020 when the loss rate exceeded 27 per cent. Staff have been pursuing a number of avenues to continue to detect and eliminate water loss.
The latest plan would see Pure Technologies engaged to use its Smartball to inspect the town’s water lines between Thornbury and the Arrowhead Booster Station.
“It is newer technology. It has been around the last few years. Bigger municipalities are using it,” said Kershaw.
Staff noted that the watermain running from Thornbury to Arrowhead is buried quite deep in places and water from leaks might not surface, making them difficult to detect.
"The Smartball inspection tool is a free-swimming, nondestructive inline inspection technology that detects acoustic activity associated with leaks and pockets of trapped air in pressurized pipelines,” Kershaw stated in her report. “Conducting the analysis will provide the town with a better understanding of the condition of the watermain, as well as identifying any leaks that are affecting the town’s real water loss. Pure Technologies Limited will provide the town with a fulsome report at the completion of the work.”
The work will cost $126,500 and the 2024 budget included $180,000 for inline water inspection work.
On the sewage side, council approved spending $126,500 on a sole source contract with J.L. Richards and Civica to conduct extra flow monitoring of the sewage system.
Kershaw reported that recent flow analysis revealed a number of areas of concerns where there are higher flow rates during rain events. The town plans to install 17 flow metres at various locations for a period of four months to monitor the flows and identify areas of infiltration and inflow.
A full report about possible mitigation measures will follow once the monitoring is complete. The 2024 budget included $165,000 for the project.
