Getting Ready to Beat the Heat

Louisville Water pumped an average of 127.2 million gallons of water per day last year. During the July 22-25 heat wave this year, the average was nearly 160 million gallons per day.

Before summer heat waves arrive, company employees take several proactive steps to make sure we can meet customer demand and maintain water quality.

“To prepare for higher pumpage and heat, much of the work takes place before the event,” said Larry Bryant, Director of Production Operations. “We typically define ‘high demand periods’ as the summer months when we have historically higher temperatures and pumpage days.”

The proactive steps include …

• Arranging for more frequent deliveries of treatment chemicals
• Enhancing distribution system monitoring and flushing to ensure we exceed water quality goals
• Monitoring for changing river conditions (“Slow moving river currents present different challenges than spring and fall rainy periods,” Bryant said.)
• Avoiding condition assessment work on large pipelines (This is done in the spring, fall, and winter.)
• Avoiding process equipment maintenance that could interfere with the ability to meet high demand

Bryant also pointed out that “equipment and system redundancy is more important this time of year. Issues that we may be able to wait to address during off-peak demand will require immediate attention and callouts during high demand.”