The metropolitan region of São Paulo has seventeen million inhabitants
settled in an eight thousand square km area. The landscape is hilly, varying from
730 m to 850 m, above sea level. The São Paulo Water & Sewer CO. (SABESP)
supplies water and sanitation services through a distribution network of twenty
five thousand km of mains, with three million customer connections and through
bulk sales to six neighboring municipalities. The water system is totally metered
and consumers have individual building storage roof tanks.
Last year's average production was sixty-four meters cubed per second
(1,417 MGD) and, the water losses were 20.6 meter cubed per second (456
MGD). Using OP24 real losses per service connection per day are around 74
gallons per connection per day and OP23 apparent losses per service
connection per day are around 77.9 gallons per connection per day. SABESP's
ILI has dropped from in excess of 8 to around 6 in the last five years.
The company has undergone an intense reorganization process during
the last five years, with aggressive financial and operational targets and, so far,
the results have met expectations. In the last fiscal year (2003), SABESP
realized a $179 million net profit, which allowed a U$ 128 million investment for
the present year for improving and maintaining the systems.
This paper discusses
the key to the SABESP strategy,
which produced a significant recovery of lost water in a short time. The savings
obtained in the short term funded the following stages of the program, longer-term
structural programs:
reduce the average pressure in the water distribution network- nearly 26%
has pressures above 60 m head (88 PSI);
reduce response time to customer complaints regarding visible leakage;
a proactive leak detection program in 50% of the distribution network;
implement rezoning in 5 sectors per year;
renew 1% of the network and extensions per year;
renew and upgrade 12.5% of the residential meters in the system per year;
replace large consumer meters;
reinforce anti-fraud actions in active and inactive connections;
enhance the bulk metering system; and,
reset inclined meters. Includes 3 references, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 400 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 14 |
| Published : | 06/17/2004 |
