Under the contract, ASTERRA will work with different small water systems across the state annually over the next four years to identify leaks. The cost for ASTERRA’s assistance will be covered by the state, says Meta Hirschl, chief data and technology steward for the New Mexico State Environment Department. The cost of repairs themselves will need to be paid for by the utilities, but the state is looking for ways to support communities that have little capacity to pay for repairs themselves. 

Water loss due to infrastructure leaks is a real problem in New Mexico, with some utilities reporting losses as high as 40% to 80% annually, according to state officials. Typically, they haven’t had the resources to conduct a comprehensive audit to fix leaky systems, Hirschl says. “Many of our communities are really understaffed in their infrastructure, sometimes it's even [just] volunteers. They may know water is leaking, but they don't know where,” she told ENR. 

Although ASTERRA has worked on larger contracts in New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere around the globe—solo or as part of a team—for this particular program, “we really want to concentrate [on communities] that can’t help themselves,” Eric Trerotola, senior sales manager for North America, ASTERRA told ENR. The model developed for the pilot could be replicated in other communities that may not even be particularly small, but which are under resourced, added John Lee, an ASTERRA spokesman. 

State Water Action Plan 

The ASTERRA initiative is one component of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Mitchell’s 50-year water action plan released last year to address a water shortage that is expected to intensify in coming years, with an estimated shortage of 750,00 acre feet total. In the document outlining the plan, the state concludes, "Without action, New Mexico will not have enough water to meet our needs."  

The plan outlines steps state officials can take over the next 50 years to increase local water supplies. Elements of the plan include increased conservation, investments of up to $500 million for new projects—including new desalination and wastewater treatment plants—and cleaning up contaminated groundwater sites. 

The partnership with ASTERRA falls under the conservation umbrella, says Andrew Hautzinger, special projects coordinator for the State Dept. of Environment. “We think in smaller water system on average, about 40% of water is lost from the time it is pumped to the time it is delivered to a business or a resident, which is about 2.5 billion gallons of fresh water that could be recovered if we were to fix all the leaks in our over 650 community water systems in the state,” he told ENR.  

ASTERRA’s Trerotola notes that the firm’s technology also can distinguish between different types of water based on the water's dielectric properties. Since the firm was established in 2013, ASTERRA has found more than 174,000 leaks around the globe. 

State officials are hopeful. “We estimate that in four years’ time … every single water system in the state that meets our criteria of less than 20,000 people will have a detailed report telling them where their water leaks are, and then we're working on associated programs to provide support for the actual fixing of the leaks,” Hautzinger said.