OAKLAND, Calif. -- Annual leakage within the East Bay Municipal Utility District system itself would provide all the water needed to supply the water system’s biggest government customer – UC Berkeley – for 133 years, a KTVU Channel 2 Investigation has found.

A three-month probe using half a dozen separate California Public Record Act requests to the publically owned water agency shows EBMUD itself is leaking almost 160 million gallons a year.

Among the principal findings, internal EBMUD engineering reports show:

• Longtime reservoir leaks are common in the system that serves 1.3 million people in much of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, the most populous region of the Bay Area. Pardee Reservoir, for example, in the Sierra foothills, leaks an average of 70,000 gallons daily. In the East Bay, Central Reservoir in Oakland leaks 36,000 gallons each day, and North Reservoir in Richmond leaks an average of 11,000 gallons each day.
• Pipeline leaks are also longstanding, according to EBMUD internal documents. Pardee Tunnel, for example, leaks an average of 18,000 gallons daily and has for at least half a century.
• Lafayette Aqueduct No. 1, which carries water for more than half of EBMUD customers, has been leaking more than a quarter of million gallons daily until very recently. Although water agency documents show the leaks have been a problem for more than 80 years, EBMUD management ordered repairs just in the last weeks, almost immediately after the disclosure of the situation to KTVU.

"For us to go in and to replace all of those reservoirs at the current time, would not be a prudent use of our ratepayer's funds," said EBMUD General Manager David Diemer. “The district serves about on an annual average, about 72 billion gallons of water to our customers. The amount of water that is leaked and we're not able to recover represents about .05 percent of that total."

But some EBMUD customers who are being asked to cut almost a fifth of their water usage during the current drought conditions, say they are not appeased.

"In the long term we may end up all having to do more,” said John Knox White of Alameda. “But it would make me feel more confident that the agency is putting themselves in the same position they're asking me to be in."