Water loss control practices in developing countries: a case study of a Brazilian region

Abstract

The control of water loss in distribution system has been highlighted in multiple discussions in the field of water and sanitation. Still, there are few scientific studies on this topic focussed on loss control performance in developing countries. With the intention to expand the limited scientific framework investigating the management of water losses in economic scarcity scenarios, the paper provides an overview of which practices directed to water loss control are being conducted in a Brazilian region. The data has been collected from 42 water utilities and shows there is a direct relationship between the utilities' performance and the number of water loss practices adopted. The divergences in the number of practices applied by the water utilities may be influenced by technical-operational, planning and management factors. The paper brings greater robustness to the loss management debates in regions with economic scarcity, being able to support the action of utilities operating in similar scenarios.

Guidelines for water conservation in Brazil

“…The urban water service index was considered since, as Magnusson (2004) points out, the willingness to respond to demand management is reduced with improved access to water. The NRW index was chosen, because illegal residential connection to the network is still a common practice in vulnerable areas (mainly slums and settlement areas; Marques & Saraiva, 2017;Sampaio & Sampaio, 2020;De Santi, Cetrulo, & Malheiros, 2021) and may as also less susceptible to water conservation incentives (Sousa & Fouto, 2019). Finally, as control municipal variable, also that varies through the years, we used municipal per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), collected from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística -IBGE, in Portuguese) database.…”

“…The drivers of water losses and the actions implemented to minimize them are related to physical features (technical-operational characteristics of the water supply system), utility management qualities (including planning) and other factors specific to where the utility is located (Ferro, Lentini, Mercadier, Romero, 2014;Van den Berg, 2015;De Santi et al, 2021). There is no water distribution system with zero water loss;…”

“…One may claim that, in Brazil, a great part of the population does not have available financial resources to pay for the used water, and, thus, end up engaging in frauds. Indeed, illegal residential connection to the network is still a common practice in vulnerable areas in Brazil (mainly slums and settlement areas; Marques & Saraiva, 2017;Sampaio & Sampaio, 2020;De Santi et al, 2021). Nevertheless, it is important to cite that in Brazil, there is a kind of tariff that is used to overcome this problem: the "social tariff" is a more accessible price of drinking water for people with low incomes, used both in private and public water utilities (Barbosa & Brusca, 2015).…”

“…The analysis of urban water supply service performance has been the focus of a considerable number of studies, yet, such studies have mainly centered on developed countries, indicating a gap in the literature (Cetrulo, Ferreira, Marques, & Malheiros, 2020). Specifically in what regards NRW, there are few scientific studies on this topic that have focused on water loss control performance in developing countries (De Santi et al, 2021), where the waste of resources resulting from high NRW levels is considerable (Kingdom, Liemberger, & Marin, 2006;IFC, 2013;Margulies, 2018;De Santi et al, 2021). Given the scarcity of resources in developing regions, understanding the most significant drivers of NRW may help utilities and governments focus on the real problem and save resources when applying the corrective actions.…”

“…Brazil has been facing water scarcity in the last years, in different regions of the country (Sousa & Fouto, 2019;Getirana et al, 2021;Sousa et al, 2022). Yet, in Latin America and the Caribbean region, Brazil has the highest NRW level (De Santi et al, 2021). In the country, water loss in the last years has been growing, reaching the level of 40% of total produced water in 2021 (SNIS, 2022).…”