Texas · PWS TX0840003 · GALVESTON County

Galveston

What Galveston filed with TWDB about the water it produced and the water it billed for, 2018–2023 — and what the filing does and does not let anyone verify.

Non-revenue water, FY2023
19.0%
Computed from filed system input and billed consumption.
Recoverable annually
$1.47M
As computed in the filed audit itself: apparent loss valued at this utility's own reported retail price of water, real loss at its own reported variable production cost. Not our estimate.
Balance check
closed
The filed water balance closes.

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What the filing says

Galveston serves 36,802 retail connections and about 53,092 people. Because it reports more than 3,300 connections, it is on an annual water loss audit cycle with TWDB.

What the record shows

19.0% non-revenue water in FY2023, higher than 58% of the 785 Texas systems that filed that year.

The reported figure is not stable enough to act on. It has moved an average of 10.7 points a year, against a Texas median of 5.79, including 19.8% to 42.4% between FY2020 and FY2021. A distribution system's real losses do not change that fast — pipe does not deteriorate or repair itself in a single year. A series that moves like this is describing how the water is being measured and recorded, not how much of it is being lost, and which year is closer to true cannot be settled from this filing.
Water balance, FY2023 · 4,054 MG system input
Billed 3,285 MG Unbilled authorized 139.2 MG Apparent loss 105.5 MG Real loss 524.6 MG

Components sum to within 0.00% of reported system input, inside the 0.5% tolerance.

Filed history, 2018–2023
Year NRW Input (MG) Recoverable Balance
2023 19.0% 4,054 $1.47M closed
2022 21.4% 4,110 $2.04M closed
2021 42.4% 3,826 $2.55M closed
2020 19.8% 3,881 $2.86M closed
2019 24.2% 3,957 $2.31M closed
2018 21.0% 4,045 $1.86M closed

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.

As computed in the filed audit itself: apparent loss valued at this utility's own reported retail price of water, real loss at its own reported variable production cost. Not our estimate.

Comparable systems

Same county, or the same size band — 10,000–50,000 connections.

SystemBasis for comparisonNRW
League CityGALVESTON County 11.2%
Texas CityGALVESTON County 29.0%
FriendswoodGALVESTON County 8.8%
Galveston County WCID 1GALVESTON County 7.1%
La MarqueGALVESTON County 26.5%
Bolivar Peninsula SUDGALVESTON County 33.5%
HitchcockGALVESTON County 33.0%
Bacliff MUDGALVESTON County 10.9%

Where is it going?

This page says how much — roughly $1.47M 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 Galveston

Sources 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.