Sterling
What Sterling filed with MassDEP about the water it produced and the water it billed for, 2019–2025 — and what the filing does and does not let anyone verify.
- Unaccounted-for water, FY2024
- 25.0% As reported by the utility; the underlying volumes are not published.
- Recoverable annually
- — Not estimable from what MassDEP publishes. A loss percentage cannot be priced without the volume it is a share of.
- Balance check
- inapplicable This state does not require a component water balance.
What the filing says
Sterling serves an unreported number of retail connections. Municipal suppliers averaging 100,000 gallons a day or more calculate unaccounted-for water and residential gallons per capita per day in the Annual Statistical Report, and both are Water Management Act performance standards. MassDEP publishes those two percentages but not the volumes behind them, which is why this page carries no dollar figure — the volumes are in this system's own ASR filing.
What the record shows
25.0% unaccounted-for water in FY2024, higher than 87% of the 278 Massachusetts systems that filed that year.
- Above the 10% standard in 3 of 6 filed years.
- The figure is getting worse across the record.
- 1 of 7 years carry no figure — which by MassDEP's own note means it had insufficient data to calculate one.
Massachusetts reports unaccounted-for water and residential gallons per capita per day as Water Management Act performance standards. It does not require the component water balance — billed, unbilled authorized, apparent loss, real loss — that the closure check tests, so there is nothing here for the identity to be evaluated against.
inapplicable · not part of this state's reporting
This is deliberately not recorded as a disclosure gap. Nothing was withheld: these figures were never requested of a Massachusetts supplier. The findings on this page are the standards comparison above and MassDEP's own review note.
| Year | UAW | RGPCD | Recoverable | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | 54.5 | — | inapplicable |
| 2024 | 25.0% | 56.4 | — | inapplicable |
| 2023 | 10.0% | 57.4 | — | inapplicable |
| 2022 | 29.0% | 55 | — | inapplicable |
| 2021 | 25.0% | 54 | — | inapplicable |
| 2020 | 1.0% | 61.3 | — | inapplicable |
| 2019 | 2.0% | — | — | inapplicable |
How to read the recoverable figure
Apparent loss is water that reached a customer and was never billed — under-registering meters, data-handling errors, unauthorized use. It is valued at the retail rate, because recovering it is revenue, and it is recoverable inside a budget year without capital work. Real loss is valued at variable production cost only: eliminating a leak saves what it cost to treat and pump the water, not what it would have sold for. Adding those two at the same rate is how a loss study produces a number nobody in a finance department believes.
Not estimable from what was filed.
Comparable systems
Same county, or the same size band — size not reported.
| System | Basis for comparison | UAW |
|---|---|---|
| Adams Fire District | size not reported | — |
| Agawam | size not reported | — |
| Amherst DPW | size not reported | — |
| Athol | size not reported | — |
| Belchertown Water District | size not reported | — |
| Bernardston Fire & Water District | size not reported | 35.0% |
| Cheshire | size not reported | — |
| Chicopee | size not reported | — |
Where is it going?
This page says how much. 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 SterlingSources 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.
- MassDEP — DEP-approved performance standards for Massachusetts public water suppliers. Retrieved 2026-08-09 from ma-rgpcd-uaw.xlsx. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/public-water-supply-tools-resources-performance-standards