Columbia County Water
What Columbia County Water filed with EPD about the water it produced and the water it billed for, 2011–2025 — and what the filing does and does not let anyone verify.
- Non-revenue water, FY2025
- 15.3% Computed from filed system input and billed consumption.
- system input volume 6,123 sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell H57 · million gallons per year, declared in the header through 2020 and settled for 2021-2025 by EPD's own cost arithmetic and by continuity across the change
- billed authorized consumption 5,188 sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell I57 · billed metered plus billed unmetered
- Recoverable annually
- $309,000 Apparent loss is valued at this utility's own reported retail price of water. Real loss is NOT included — EPD publishes a variable production cost whose unit it does not declare, so no dollar figure is put on the leaked water. The real recoverable total is higher than this by an amount this filing does not let anyone state.
- cost of apparent losses, as filed 309,019 sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell Z57
- Balance check
- inapplicable EPD derives water losses from system input minus authorized consumption, so this decomposition holds by construction.
2026-09-06-69903a9418bc.xlsx2025 Water Audits H57
Where this figure comes from
(system input − billed authorized) ÷ system input × 100
From data/archive/ga-epd-water-loss/2026-09-06-69903a9418bc.xlsx (SHA-256 69903a9418bc6d60), retrieved 2026-09-06 from the published source.
2026-09-06-69903a9418bc.xlsx2025 Water Audits Z57
Where this figure comes from
cost of apparent losses + cost of real losses, both as computed in the filed audit
From data/archive/ga-epd-water-loss/2026-09-06-69903a9418bc.xlsx (SHA-256 69903a9418bc6d60), retrieved 2026-09-06 from the published source.
What the record shows
15.3% non-revenue water in FY2025, higher than 23% of the 228 Georgia systems that filed that year.
- The figure is roughly flat across the record.
Compliance record
8 violations on EPA's record for this system as of 2026Q2, of which 3 are health-based. 8 resolved, and 0 still open.
Nothing on the record is open as of 2026Q2.
Counted as distinct violations, not as rows: EPA's export carries one row per enforcement action taken against a violation, so a row count would multiply this system's record several times over. A violation here is a breach of a reporting, monitoring or contaminant-level rule as reported to EPA — it is not a measurement of the water, and this site has none.
Source: US EPA, Safe Drinking Water Information System, via the ECHO national download, 2026Q2. How we hold it.
EPD derives water losses from system input minus authorized consumption, so these parts sum to the whole on every filing. What a filing can get wrong is which of these numbers were measured.
Where these volumes come from
- System input 6,123 MG sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell H57 · million gallons per year, declared in the header through 2020 and settled for 2021-2025 by EPD's own cost arithmetic and by continuity across the change
- Billed authorized 5,188 MG sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell I57 · billed metered plus billed unmetered
- Unbilled authorized 288.2 MG sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell K57 · unbilled metered plus unbilled unmetered
- Apparent loss 80.6 MG sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell O57
- Real loss 565.8 MG sheet 2025 Water Audits , cell P57
From data/archive/ga-epd-water-loss/2026-09-06-69903a9418bc.xlsx (SHA-256 69903a9418bc6d60), retrieved 2026-09-06 from the published source.
| Year | NRW | Input (MG) | Recoverable |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 15.3% | 6,123 | $309,000 |
| 2024 | 14.8% | 6,166 | $316,000 |
| 2023 | 12.5% | 5,586 | $171,000 |
| 2022 | 11.3% | 6,166 | $194,000 |
| 2021 | 11.0% | 5,784 | $139,000 |
| 2020 | 8.0% | 5,203 | $117,000 |
| 2019 | 15.6% | 5,884 | $157,000 |
| 2018 | 10.1% | 4,911 | $156,000 |
| 2017 | 11.5% | 5,061 | $89,400 |
| 2016 | 13.0% | 5,678 | $98,400 |
| 2015 | 14.4% | 5,048 | $69,000 |
| 2014 | 15.7% | 5,108 | $84,200 |
| 2013 | 14.4% | 4,521 | $143,000 |
| 2012 | 13.9% | 5,273 | $180,000 |
| 2011 | 16.2% | 5,795 | $1.0M |
Comparable systems
In the same county.
| System | Basis for comparison | NRW |
|---|---|---|
| Grovetown | COLUMBIA County | 16.6% FY2025 |
| Harlem | COLUMBIA County | 19.8% FY2020 |
| Savannah - Savannah Main | over 50,000 connections | 18.1% FY2025 |
| Macon | over 50,000 connections | 23.3% FY2025 |
| Walton County | over 50,000 connections | 36.1% FY2025 |
| Paulding County | over 50,000 connections | 39.1% FY2025 |
| Gainesville | over 50,000 connections | 9.8% FY2025 |
| Augusta | over 50,000 connections | 34.1% FY2025 |
Where is it going?
This page says how much — roughly $309,000 a year. It cannot say which accounts, which zones, or which meters. That takes your billing history, your meter reads, and your production data reconciled against each other.
Our Water Loss Recovery Snapshot is three weeks, one flat fee, and the deliverable is a ranked list of specific accounts and zones with dollars and a confidence on each.
See what the Snapshot delivers Email us about Columbia County WaterSources and corrections. Every figure above is either filed by the utility or computed from filed figures, and each one says which. If a number here is wrong, it is either wrong in the filing or wrong in our reading of it — tell us which and we will correct the page and say what changed.
- Georgia EPD — validated water loss audit results, filed under the Water Stewardship Act of 2010. Retrieved 2026-09-06 from data/archive/ga-epd-water-loss/2026-09-06-69903a9418bc.xlsx. https://epd.georgia.gov/watershed-protection-branch/water-efficiency-and-water-loss-audits