Obsolescence in Water Works Equipment and Operating Methods

Water supply is a non-competitive industry. There is no other industry selling a quantity product that is essential to the community life that is so generally in the non-competitive field. While financial competition may exist between the water supply that an individual industrial user may secure from wells on his property and the public water supply, such competition is very limited. You cannot drive in your auto to a neighboring town and obtain the water necessary for your home or business use. You must take what is brought to your door by your local system. This situation does not make for special alertness on the part of the water works management, but rather tends to develop the attitude of getting along with what one has instead of substituting something better. General longevity and stability of water works structures minimizes equipment changes. Water works construction, including what is more generally termed equipment, has always been outstanding for its long life and water works financing has reflected this condition by the use of bonds with maturities up to fifty years to cover capital expenditures. We, in the industry, have learned to think of our plant as one that will serve for decades and at times have failed to realize that, while this thought is correct for much of our plant, there are portions of the plant that are by no means unimportant, that should not be accepted as necessarily having a very long useful life. Methods of operations have changed but slowly. Speaking with a background of forty years of intimate contact with the maintenance and operation of water supply systems, the writer is of the opinion that operating methods in the water works field have changed only slowly and that such observation holds true today. It is perhaps