The city of Itapeví is located in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area in the South West of Brazil. The area of the municipality is 80 square kilometers, the population by 2006 was 199,905 inhabitants, and the average monthly family income was 260 USD.

BBL Engenharia, a Miya group company was contracted by SABESP, for a period of 15 months, with the aim to achieve a 50% reduction in the NRW levels.

Basic Information about the water infrastructure:

• Length of water mains: 330 km
• Number of Service Connections: 32,345 un
• Total Input Volume: 1,226,963 m3/month, or: 1,250 l/conn/day
• Total Metered Consumption: 473 l/conn/day
• Non Revenue Water: 777 l/conn/day

Concepts of the NRW Management Plan:

• Water balance methodology
• Performance Indicators
• Pressure and flow monitoring points
• Results accountability procedure
• Continuous diagnosis and performance calculations
• Action plan reviewing process 

Measures taken for real loss reduction:

• Implementation and review the boundaries of a total of 11 DMAs
• Maintenance of existing 11 PRVs, and implemented new 13 PRVs
• Orientation of the client in relation to the pump stations operation
• Leak detection services for 1,300 km of mains
• Change of 2,836 Service connections
• Supervision of leak repair

Measures taken for apparent loss reduction:

• Review of the commercial data base
• Verification of the meter reading process
• Installation of 14,540 new meters
• Sizing and changing of meters
• Identifying fraud
• Fraud elimination and regularization of low income areas

Regularization of selected low income areas:

• Construction of 15 km of water nets
• Installing of service connections, meters as well as connections up to the roof tanks in 3,593 houses
• Client registration
• Removal of all illegal connections
• Set tariffs for Low Income Areas

The results:

• NRW reduction was 63% on a monthly basis and 51% reduction on a 12 month average
  • Real loss reduction of 61% from 412K m3/month, to 160K m3/month
  • The ILI was reduced from 9.6 to 5
  • Apparent loss reduction of 67% from 341K m3/month to 112K m3/month
• The average pay back time of the actions to reduce real and apparent losses were 6 months.
• Autorized volume increased by 47%from 460K m3month to 675K m3month
• In low income areas which were not supplied by regular water service, it was necessary to install all infrastructure. The infrastructure included mains, service connections, meters and internal connections up to the roof tanks
  This was a very important social action, and the payback time was 42 months.

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