Harris County WCID 89

What the filing says

Harris County WCID 89 serves 3,053 retail connections and about 9,039 people. Because it reports fewer than 3,300 connections, it is on a five-year water loss audit cycle with TWDB.

What the record shows

11.8% non-revenue water in FY2024, higher than 28% of the 908 Texas systems that filed that year.

• The figure is improving across the record.

The reported figure is stable, moving 6.9 points a year against a Texas median of 5.79, so the level is more likely to reflect the system than the paperwork.

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.