Fun fact, water systems have to be monitored and leaks have to be found or you'll lose a lot and I mean a lot of water. This tiny crack was causing about a 20% water loss for this town. I can't remember off hand how many gallons a minute that was but I THINK it averaged out to around 600 gallons an hour.
We can do water conservation on an individual level but if we're not monitoring our systems, we're doing ourselves an insane disservice. We're wasting time, resources, chemicals and energy treating and testing water that's just being dumped.
This valve was replaced and their water loss went back down to 1.5% the following month. (That's really great and the lowest of all the towns I've worked with).
There's a fun water system info dump for you ;)
Yeah we were all shocked too. However this is a blow off valve in the mountains, not a typical valve. It allows any air in the system to escape. Well, when it failed it let all the water escape too!