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Murphy reports sharp drop in water loss; staff to rebid 5,300-service-line replacement project
Summary
City utility staff said water loss fell to 6% in April versus 18% the previous year, and described plans to replace the remaining 5,300 copper service lines with HDPE; bids opened April 2 were above budget and were rejected, with the project rebid May 14 and expected to return to council by July 7.
Utility staff provided an update showing a multi-year decline in water loss, with April 2026 at 6% compared with 18% the prior year for the same period. The presenter said the city is using proactive patrols, Neptune 360 software for customer-side leaks and reactive responses to customer reports to investigate and repair leaks.
On capital work, staff described a program to replace the remaining 5,300 copper service lines with high-density polyethylene (HDPE). "That project actually went out to bid in March, and we opened those bids on April 2. The bids were higher than what we expected, so we... recommended that we reject those bids," the presenter said. Staff reissued the project for bid on May 14, with council review anticipated no later than July 7 and construction possibly starting in late August if contracts proceed.
Council members pressed for metrics about investigation and repair response times; staff said they keep spreadsheets now and plan to use the city's Cartograph system to track performance metrics in the future. Staff estimated the routine annual cost of repairing the roughly 50 leaks per year at "a couple $100,000 a year," though an exact total was not given in the presentation.
