[HollyMutual-Announce] Leak Alert, Please Help

[Holly Mutual Water Company]

All:

Colorado Water Well recently restored the Whitehall Well to operation, but unfortunately that uncovered the serious underlying reason why we've had problems distributing water since late April this year. Based on recently collected data, Colorado Water Well (CWW) estimates we've been losing at least 66,000 gallons of water per day to a leak somewhere in the system. We're spending a lot of time trying to isolate where this might be. We would very much appreciate it if everyone could check the area near their Holly Mutual cutoff valves and irrigation systems for any pooling of water and/or the drainage of water into ditches. Please let us know if you see anything and we'd be happy to look into potential sightings. Please also make sure your irrigation systems are programmed to only use water on your two assigned days per week.

To minimize leak water wastage, we're limiting the distribution of water for irrigation purposes to 8:00-10:00 am. Each property is only allowed to use water for irrigation on its assigned two days per week, and this restriction also applies to the use of drip irrigation/hand watering. Unlike Denver Water, which provides some exceptions to its watering rules, Holly Mutual lacks any such excess capacity. At the moment the Whitehall Well takes nearly 20 minutes to ramp up its distribution pumps, so water generally hasn't been available until about 8:20 am. CWW has been contacted and will correct that the next time they are at the wells.

Whitehall is currently programmed to terminate its distribution at noon, to allow you and your irrigation companies additional time to check and maintain irrigation systems during daylight hours. This additional time is not for irrigation and will soon have to be discontinued.

The above mentioned leak appears to have occurred even when we were not distributing water. The Piedmont Well is close to the highest elevation in our neighborhood, and gravity was apparently draining water from its storage tanks 24 hours day, to the point the well pump could not keep up. This forced us to isolate Piedmont from the distribution pipeline, after which we've been running tests to see if the Piedmont Well and its storage tanks might be the cause of the leak. This is tedious and I've been to the well many times over the past couple of weeks to make measurements and reduce costly visits from CWW.

We're now nearly 100% certain the Piedmont storage tank is not leaking water. We still need to prove its pressure tank and well piping are intact, but that will require at least one more CWW visit. Like other well companies, the drought has everyone scrambling along the Front Range to fix wells being stressed to their breaking points. At best CWW might be here over the weekend. I'm hoping to resolve the leak problem, so we can restore Piedmont to operation and expand our distribution times. But until then our hands are tied.

Sorry,
Mark