Total water production shrank 3.89 percent to only 6.4 million cubic meters in February from 6.7 million last month considering the shorter length of production period. This represented an increase of 3.17 percent compared to February last year’s 6.2 million cubic meters of water produced.

The drop can be largely attributed to the shorter average operating time of production wells, which registered only 560 hours per well during the month compared to the previous year’s average of 569 hours.

On the other hand, pumping operations were interrupted for a total of only 72 hours during the than last month’s 170 hours. These interruptions were due to the district’s operational and maintenance activities as well as power interruptions.
Among the nine water systems, three incurred increases in production, namely, Tugbok, Toril and Lumondao.

Billed consumption this month fell 11.76 percent to 4.5 million cubic meters compared to last month’s record high of 5.1 million. This volume was close to the same period last year’s consumption. Consequently, per capita consumption went down 2.48 percent to only 198 liters compared to last month’s 203 liters per person per day. For the past three months, billed consumption exhibited an erratic trend, going from record highs to steep declines on the following periods. This could be attributed to unequal lengths of reading periods from month to month.

Non-revenue water this month went up 26.83 percent to 29.66 percent from the record low of 23.39 percent in January. This was due to the bigger decline in billed consumption compared to total production brought about by the shorter period of recording (February had 28 days compared to 31 in January).

Accounted water loss continued on its declining trend experienced since July last year. This month, only 331,094 cubic meters were lost due to detected leaks, maintenance and operational activities and other authorized consumption. This represented a slight decrease from last month’s losses in terms of volume but an increase of 3.5 percent in terms of percentage to total water produced.

Unaccounted water losses, on the other hand, continued to climb 28 percent in terms of volume and 33 percent in terms of percentage to total water production. This indicates that the reduction in volume lost to leaks did not translate to a lower NRW, but rather, augmented further the volume of water lost due to unaccounted sources, most probably non-surfacing leaks. Thus, enhanced leak detection activities must be continuously pursued in order to achieve significant gains in NRW reduction efforts.