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<\/p>\nThe Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s non-revenue water loss on Saipan is currently at 60%, but CUC is steadily decreasing that number, according to CUC deputy executive director for water and wastewater division Kevin Watson on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
In response to questions by Sen. Karl King-Nabors (R-Tinian) during a Senate special committee meeting, Watson said water that is not earning CUC any money\u2014called \u201cnon-revenue water\u201d\u2014is either going to a customer that is inaccurately measured due to old meters or to leaks or overflow of a reservoir.<\/p>\n
He said they are able to decrease that 60% loss by implementing operational best management practices and lowering reservoir levels so they don\u2019t overflow at night.<\/p>\n
In October 2023, CUC\u2019s non-revenue water loss on Saipan was at 64%, which means that more than half of the water CUC was producing was lost and not earning money for the agency.<\/p>\n
To further cut down water loss, CUC will be initiating a leak detection and will be repairing leaks as soon as reasonably possible, Watson told the Special Committee on the CNMI Government\u2019s Unpaid CUC Bills on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Watson said they are also putting in a new meter accuracy zoning bench test and a remote tester, and that should go in operation in the next two months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat will help us determine the accuracy of the meters for the customers, commercial and government. And we can be more proactive in changing out inaccurate meters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The deputy executive director added they are presently doing a water audit for an annual accounting of water loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do meter the production wells. And from that we can tell how much we\u2019re putting into the system. And we calculate how much is going to the customer,\u201d Watson said.<\/p>\n
Senate President Edith E. DeLeon Guerrero (D-Saipan) created the committee to investigate the government\u2019s $77.8-million unpaid utility bills. Sen. Corina L. Magofna (Ind-Saipan) chairs the committee.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kevin Watson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s non-revenue water loss on Saipan is currently at 60%, but CUC…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}