(4/13) Increased metering of water lines in Taneytown is aiding the city in addressing water leaks, but wastewater infiltration into the sewer system remains an issue.
Regarding the loss of water through leakage occurring in the pipeline-delivery system, City Manager James Wieprecht told the city Council at their April work session that municipal Department of Public Works (DPW) staff are continuing to install leak-detection meters in order to identify areas of concern.
Weibrecht said, "We have leak detection equipment throughout the city now, and we’re working away from that ‘lift and shift’ approach (‘lift and shift’ refers to a type of leak-detection methodology which relies on a change in the sound of flowing water to try and identify the source of a leak)."
The town manager stated that the metering identified nine leaks, and that staff has managed to resolve most of them, adding that there are still two unresolved leaks awaiting remediation, one of those on Frederick Street that is in a lateral line leading to a dwelling, and the other is on Divern Street.
"Through this leak-detection program, we’ve identified some areas where we were losing water, and we’ve managed to pretty quickly resolve all but two, and hopefully these two will be resolved in the next week to two weeks," he said, adding, "That’s really helping to keep our water system tight (leak-proof)."
Weibrecht also discussed the city’s DPW efforts for controlling inflow and infiltration (I&I) into the municipal wastewater collection system.
[I&I involves the introduction of unwanted wastewater into a wastewater collection system,
which can occur in a number of ways, but the most prevalent cause pertaining to old municipal collection systems is when cracks or breaks in pipelines have occurred.]
The town manager said that tackling the city’s I&I issues is not quite the same as dealing with water leaks. "There are more variables because of our inflow and infiltration. In 2018 we had a very wet year; our average flow was 1.244 million gallons (of incoming wastewater) a day." The amount of incoming wastewater the treatment plant received in 2020 was down to .736 million gallons a day.
He said some of the reduction was due to the work on replacing old terra-cotta sewer pipes during work on the O’Brien Avenue Bridge project, in conjunction with having a drier year than in 2018.
Mayor Bradley Wantz said, "Our biggest pressing issue (regarding water and sewer) is our sewer capacity at the moment, which is what we’re trying to tackle with our I&I projects. The sewer definitely needs the biggest attention right now."
