November 6, 2025
New Water Asset Management Tool Reveals the Hidden Costs of Water Loss
Our nation’s water infrastructure is aging, and beneath our feet, leaking pipes are costing us gallons and dollars. A new water asset management tool taking the stage to help make this invisible issue visible, empowering decision makers to take action.
From Portales, NM, to Phillipsburg, NJ, and everywhere in between – communities across the U.S. are facing a growing issue: water main breaks.
Whether in bustling cities like Chicago and Atlanta or smaller towns like Rexburg, ID, and Hanover Township, PA, these incidents are causing costly disruptions for homeowners and businesses alike. The impact is widespread, affecting daily life and underscoring the urgent need for infrastructure resilience.
In Rexberg, ID, crews uncovered an even larger issue when conducting an initial repair that caused reduced water pressure throughout the community. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma City, OK, water main breaks increased by 65% since the previous fiscal year. Further, in Phillipsberg, NJ, the city delayed its first day of school because of a water main break.
Nearly every day, municipal water managers face a persistent challenge that quietly drains resources and impacts community sustainability: non-revenue water loss.
For decision makers who want to get ahead of this water asset management problem, we’ve developed a new and useful tool: the CivilSense™ ROI Calculator.
Inputting readily available information can reveal the likely scale of water loss beneath your feet, transforming complex operational data into clear financial insights that drive informed decision-making.
Quantifying the hidden costs of water loss
The CivilSense™ ROI Calculator supports municipal water asset management by making invisible losses visible. The tool enables water managers to quantify probable non-revenue water losses within their system, converting abstract percentages into concrete dollar amounts and gallon measurements that resonate with stakeholders.
Water systems lose billions of gallons annually through aging infrastructure, yet many communities struggle to articulate the true cost of these losses. The CivilSense™ ROI Calculator bridges this gap by projecting leak frequencies based on system characteristics and calculating the economic impact of main breaks before they occur.
This probabilistic capability enables the shift from reactive maintenance to proactive infrastructure management.
Valuable Analysis in minutes
Input simple system parameters — network length, variable production cost, business tax rate — and you’ll estimate:
- Annual non-revenue water loss, in gallons and dollars
- Future main-break risk likelihood
- Economic and budgetary impact of main breaks
Water main break estimations are one of the calculator’s most valuable functions. Using realworld data gathered from CivilSense™ projects carried out across the country — such as Bartow County, GA — the tool calculates probable break frequencies and the likely direct and indirect costs associated with them.
This capability helps water asset managers begin to quantify the risks inherent in their network and determine how urgently they need to conduct a more targeted analysis to detect and locate leaks.
Water asset management data
Community leaders can input their specific system details through guided prompts, with the tool instantly converting these parameters into understandable metrics.
If particular information isn’t available or isn’t known, the tool uses national averages and calculated data to provide a representative assessment.
The result is immediate feedback as data is input, allowing decision makers to explore different scenarios and understand how various factors influence their system’s efficiency.
This interactive approach facilitates a better understanding of water loss dynamics and their financial consequences.
Supporting strategic planning and funding
The calculator’s output extends beyond basic loss calculations to support comprehensive water asset management, financial, and operational planning. Generated reports provide the documentation necessary for grant applications, budget proposals, and board presentations, strengthening the business case for infrastructure investments or leak detection and risk
analysis projects.
Municipal leaders increasingly require data-driven justification for capital expenditures, which is why the CivilSense™ ROI Calculator is the ideal tool that translates initial technical assessments into financial language that resonates with decision-makers.
With the CivilSense™ ROI Calculator, communities can demonstrate the potential cost-benefit relationship of infrastructure improvements with confidence, supported by reliable calculations and professional reporting.
Learn more
- Try the CivilSense™ ROI Calculator for yourself
- Read about how a Mid-West water utility saved $213,000
- Visit our CivilSense™ page
