Tracking down and repairing leaks in your home is crucial to helping the community save water, especially as a shortage on the Colorado River will reduce the amount of water we can draw from Lake Mead—the source of 90 percent of our supply—by 8.1 billion gallons beginning in January 2023.
Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) is doing its part to combat leaks in the community’s water system with state-of-the-art technology, which technicians use to find and repair leaks that otherwise could cause major damage to pipes, and valves, and streets — and could lead to serious water outages.
Because water under pressure makes a distinct high-frequency sound as it escapes through a leak in a pipe, LVVWD technicians use a variety of acoustic equipment, which can detect subsurface sounds and enables them to pinpoint the location of a leak.
These include handheld devices with ground-sounding microphones and others that can be attached to valves and can pick up the sounds of leaks in pipes. LVVWD technicians can then utilize software to differentiate the sound of a leak from ambient noise and determine the best course of action if a leak is detected.
With more than 7,000 miles of pipe in the LVVWD network, locating leaks in the system can be a daunting task. The LVVWD’s leak detection program is critical to the community’s water conservation efforts, as it has led to the discovery of more than 2,500 underground leaks and saved more than 665 million gallons since 2004.
Your investment. Your water. Use it responsibly. In Southern Nevada, saving water is everyone’s job. To learn more about how the LVVWD tracks, finds, and repairs leaks in our water network, visit lvvwd.com.
Members of the editorial and news staff of the Las Vegas Review-Journal were not involved in the creation of this content.
