County Council members Mrs. Karen Eoff and Mr. Dru Kanuha,
County Council members Mrs. Karen Eoff and Mr. Dru Kanuha,
I have been following the Department of Water Supply water pump situation as a resident of North Kona and watching our vegetation begin to die with the most recent water restrictions. Recent WHT articles regularly mention that the DWS and the water board are going to initiate an audit.
While researching information on the subject of water wells and pumps, this DWS Energy Evaluation Report dated May 2015 and revised July 2015 came to light.
https://www.hawaiidws.org/5%20events%20news%20notices/5c%20news/Hawaii%20Final%20Report%20final%208-14-2015rev.pdf
Although it is primarily an energy use evaluation, there are some interesting areas in the report that may shed some light on the current issues with our water system.
1) Unaccounted for water usage: Page 16 indicates that there are significant losses of income to DWS due to leaks and other water losses. In 2000, the Department of Water recognized that the Island of Hawaii water distribution system had significant amounts of non-revenue water (NRW) in this area.
The DWS has been challenged to provide enough funding to keep up with data logger deployment. As shown in Figure 3.1, the result has been a drop off in operational loggers and a reduction in recorded leakage and energy savings. Has the DWS been shortsighted in not hiring needed staff that would more than pay for their personnel costs in increased billings for water usage and fixing leakage issues? The apparent DWS failure to mitigate the ongoing NRW losses only exacerbates their alleged past and present financial/budget issues when it comes to having spares and other redundancy for unexpected failures of equipment.
2) Routine preventative maintenance of the pumps. Page 20 of the report mentions that oil changes are necessary to maintain the pumps and describes the cost at $30,000 to $150,000 to accomplish this and other maintenance. Did DWS cut corners to avoid these costs? The report indicates DWS had pump efficiencies that were significantly lower than original pump curve values. Did DWS act on this information in a timely manner or did they just wait until the machinery failed?
The two areas mentioned above seem to need some follow-up and there may be other areas to investigate by those with more expertise. Example: Did the DWS accomplish any of the suggestions on page 11?:
Power factor correction capacitors — premium efficiency motors — installing or removing variable speed drives — pump efficiency improvements — installing hydro turbine generators — demand controls/SCADA systems to take advantage of Rider M rate schedules. — assisting DWS staff with unaccounted for water projects, for example.
It is mystifying that the DWS still has not identified a reason for the failures nor even provided the public or apparently the Water Board with a description of what part(s) actually failed on the individual pumps involved.
Maybe you both can dig deeper into this for the residents of Hawaii Island?
Antony Mitchell is a resident of Keauhou