A world expert on unregistered water, Djevad Koldzo, claims that Sarajevo has enough water to supply more than 1.98 million citizens.
Koldzo noted that the total amount of water, which is being exploited at sources and supplied to the water supply system in Sarajevo, amounts to about 3.8 m3/s.
“Since166 l/day (5 m3/month) is required for the proper supply of one person, that quantity is enough for a proper supply of more than 1.98 million citizens,” said Koldzo.
According to him, since all major commercial consumers (such as Coca Cola, Pivara etc.) have their own water sources and considering the fact that, according to the results of the census from 2013, there are 438.433 citizens in the entire canton of Sarajevo (including municipalities of Hadzici, Ilijas, Trnovo that have their own water supply), the quantity of water supplied to the system is more than 4 times higher than required for proper water supply.
He also added that the difference between the quantity of delivered and invoiced water (the only known data at this point) is unregistered water and not physical losses (leakage of water) as it is usually stated. Unregistered water consists of physical losses (all leaks in the system), commercial losses (stealing water, illegal consumption, incorrect measurements and readings, errors in databases, etc.) and legal unregistered water (consumers who have a legal connection but they do not receive bills for some unknown reason).
Koldzo also stated that 31 l/min of water can leak through a 6 mm diameter hole, at a pressure of 5 bar (normal pressure in the water supply system in Sarajevo), and if all unregistered water in Sarajevo was a physical loss (which is not), it would leak through a total of 5800 holes with a diameter of 6 mm.
According to him, the total length of all pipelines in Sarajevo is around 1500 kilometers. Therefore, for the current state of physical losses in the water supply system in Sarajevo, only 2.7 openings with a diameter of 6 mm are sufficient for each kilometer of the pipeline.
“According to statistics, 75 to 90 % of all leakage happens on service and connection pipes of small diameters, since they are subjected to the greatest oscillations in flow and pressure. According to this, with the elimination of losses on service and connection pipelines, we would save between 1.1 and 1, 4 m3/s, and consider that physical losses are 70 % of the total amount of unregistered water, or that the amount of commercial losses is 30 % of the total value of unregistered water,” stated Koldzo.
(Source: klix.ba)