Texas · PWS TX0570013 · DALLAS County

Lancaster

What Lancaster filed with TWDB about the water it produced and the water it billed for, 2015–2024 — and what the filing does and does not let anyone verify.

Non-revenue water, FY2024
41.2%
Computed from filed system input and billed consumption.
Recoverable annually
$16.9M
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

Lancaster serves 15,650 retail connections and about 42,183 people. Because it reports more than 3,300 connections, it is on an annual water loss audit cycle with TWDB.

What the record shows

41.2% non-revenue water in FY2024, higher than 88% of the 908 Texas systems that filed that year.

The reported figure is not stable enough to act on. It has moved an average of 14.8 points a year, against a Texas median of 5.79, including 5.1% to 33.4% between FY2015 and FY2016. 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, FY2024 · 3,091 MG system input
Billed 1,817 MG Unbilled authorized 804.5 MG Apparent loss 104.7 MG Real loss 364.6 MG

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

Filed history, 2015–2024
Year NRW Input (MG) Recoverable Balance
2024 41.2% 3,091 $16.9M closed
2021 14.4% 2,301 $257,185 closed
2020 7.3% 2,087 $152,187 closed
2019 7.0% 2,241 $160,363 closed
2018 18.0% 2,033 $137,441 closed
2016 33.4% 1,726 $95,600 closed
2015 5.1% 1,682 $75,288 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
CoppellDALLAS County 7.1%
DuncanvilleDALLAS County 29.4%
SachseDALLAS County 8.8%
DesotoDALLAS County 29.6%
Cedar HillDALLAS County 6.3%
Farmers BranchDALLAS County 16.3%
University ParkDALLAS County 8.5%
Balch SpringsDALLAS County 25.3%

Where is it going?

This page says how much — roughly $16.9M 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 Lancaster

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.