Nearly one-quarter of municipal water in the Quaker Valley's 11 communities goes down the drain, according to annual engineering reports of local water authorities.

Leading the local losers is Sewickley Water Authority, which serves Sewickley, Osborne, Haysville and Sewickley Heights, with 25 percent of unaccounted-for water.

Whether through leakage, un-metered fire service lines, fire flows, under-registration meters, theft and other unmetered water use, unaccounted-for water, also called non-revenue water, is water that never gets billed.

For Sewickley's authority, that's approximately 75 million gallons each year or more than 200,000 gallons per day.

"There's just a lot of ways to lose water," said Ray Wolfgang, the authority's superintendent.

Old pipes are one of the reasons for so much loss, he said.

At Aleppo Water Authority, the 24 percent of unaccounted-for water -- 16 million gallons -- comes in second, also above the recommended 10 to 15 percent goal of unaccounted-for water from the Amer-ican Water Works Association's Leak Detection and Water Accountability Commit-tee.

Aleppo Water, celebrating its 40th year of service this year, is making progress in its water waste, cutting losses by 6 percentage points in four years and 21 since 1988.

The authority serves more than 600 customers in Aleppo and Glenfield Borough.

"We're working on it constantly," said John Trapizona, chairman of the authority board.

Although Aleppo has cut down on lost water over the last few years, Trapizona says, one glaring obstacle in reducing lost water is that the water from West View Water Authority, located on Neville Island, is pumped directly to residents' homes.

It's roughly three miles from the West View authority to Aleppo and another 15 miles of pipes underneath the township, "giving the water plenty of time to get lost along the way," Trapizona said.

Sewickley authority has to deal with 40 miles of pipes, according to Wolfgang.

But short of replacing all of the lines, there's not much either authority can do to help lower the lost water.

And when it costs approximately $1 million per mile for new pipes, Wolfgang said, "there's only so much you can do."

Within the valley, only Edge-worth Water Authority, with 17 percent water loss, is within the American Water Works Associa-tion's recommended goal of unaccounted-for water.