By Richard Kerns
rkerns@newstribune.info
tribune staff writer

KEYSER — The city of Keyser is already seeing a dramatic decrease in water consumption on Limestone Road after city crews installed water meters on a half-dozen homes that received free water for decades.
Water Distribution Supervisor Sonny Gank reported at this week's Water Board meeting that daily use in the area has fallen from about 20,000 gallons to 5,500.
“The consumption out there is way down,” Gank said. “It will be, because they're paying for it now.”
Located on Limestone Road, which leads to the city's former reservoir, the properties in question sit along the path of a century-old water main that is set to be replaced as part of an $11.5 million water system upgrade. Property owners tapped into the line decades ago, and had long maintained that their deeds provided for free water in perpetuity, in exchange for the use of their land for the water line.
Even as Keyser developed a modern water system, with residents metered for their use and billed based on consumption, the Limestone properties were left alone, “grandfathered” in their free water by the alleged deed agreements.
Previous city administrations were aware of the arrangement and lamented the disparity in treatment, but did nothing to address the matter.
After Mayor William “Sonny” Rhodes was elected mayor this spring, he cited the Limeston properties as one of his priorities. If deed agreements weren't found, he said, the properties would be metered.
“There's 36 or 37 houses on Hollywood Road that can't get any water, and here we have people who are getting it for free,” Rhodes said at a meeting this summer. “That's just not right.”
In July, Rhodes directed City Attorney John Athey to research the
deeds in question. Athey found no covenants providing for free water, and subsequently wrote to the property owners, advising them to either provide such documentation, or allow city crews to install the meters. None of the property owners were able to provide written evidence entitling them to free water.
The Limestone homes were connected by a patchwork of pipes, and city crews had to run new lines in some places. Gank said he was pleasantly surprised by the reception he received from the residents, or lack thereof.
“The ones I thought I'd get the most flak from, I didn't hear from at all,” he said.
In addition to higher than usual consumption throughout the year, usage among the Limestone properties spiked dramatically each winter because some of the lines — since re-routed — ran through culverts and residents would let the water flow to prevent the pipes from freezing.
Even as the city reduces water losses at Limestone, crews remain busy dealing with leaks elsewhere in the aging system. Just this week Gank and his men repaired a 6 -inch line near Carskaden Road that had sprung a leak, at a loss of about 150,000 gallons a day.
Finding such leaks is largely guesswork until the water bubbles to the surface, and even at that rate of loss, Gank said, the water never surfaced with the Carskaden leak.
Based on consumption rates monitored at the water treatment plant, the city knows that another major leak has occurred, but as of Wednesday crews had been unable to find it.
Gank estimates that Keyser's water system loses about 27 percent of its treated water to leaks.