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AP Water Leak Continues

By Douglas Carman | Highlands Today

Published: January 16, 2008

AVON PARK — Water has been gushing out of a faulty water valve at the site of the old Walker Memorial Hospital for at least a month, creating a small, steady stream down U.S. 27's southbound curb near the Polk County line.

Avon Park's Public Works Department, which supplies water to that area, has been aware of it for that long. But if it wasn't for the yellow tape surrounding what now resembles a small spring off the side of the highway, there would be no visible sign suggesting that they knew about the problem.

Public Works Coordinator Ted Long said that he ordered the parts to fix it, but he and consulting engineer Paul Bizier said that the pipes were about 75 years old and the parts were slow coming in.

Bizier said the pipes dating around the 1920s likely used oakum, which was used with molten lead and tar to seal the pipes before they began using PVC and other plastics.

Long would not give an estimate on the size of the leak, nor would he estimate how much water was flowing out of that particular bust. He also would not say how large the leak was in relation to other leaks that would appear in the city's water system.

"Any leak is large," he said. "Any leak is a water loss, lost revenue, lost expenses."

In response to those questions, Long said that South-west Florida Water Management District requires that no more than 12 percent of a municipal water supply is lost to unaccountable matters such as leaks within the system. He said SWFWMD did a recent leak detection survey on the city's water system, and it was determined that it was losing eight percent of its water.

Robyn Hanke, a spokeswoman for SWFWMD, said that the voluntary water leak detection survey was last performed in March 2007. She could not confirm the water loss rate stated by Long but she thought it was accurate, even though that number could fluctuate rapidly each month.

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