Introduction
When discussions about Non-Revenue Water (NRW) begin, they often focus on the visible problems: leaking pipes, illegal connections, inaccurate meters, billing disputes, and water theft. These issues are important because they directly contribute to water and revenue losses. Yet despite decades of technical interventions, infrastructure investments, policy reforms, and operational improvements, many utilities continue to experience the same recurring challenges. This raises an important question: Are these truly the root causes of NRW, or are they symptoms of deeper conditions within the system?
Looking beyond the visible events invites us to explore the underlying structures, relationships, and behaviors that repeatedly produce them. From this perspective, recurring leaks, unauthorized connections, delayed repairs, billing disputes, and customer dissatisfaction are not isolated problems to be solved independently. Rather, they are recurring outcomes generated by the way the broader system functions. This article takes the next step by examining the deeper conditions that allow these visible challenges to persist. The article focuses on conditions that keep reproducing the same NRW challenges and issues despite continuous interventions.
The Story Behind the Symptoms
Throughout my experience in the water sector, I have learned that the problems utilities see most clearly are often the last events in a much longer chain of interactions. Whether the issue is an illegal connection, repeated vandalism, a disputed bill, or poor workmanship, the visible event is rarely where the story begins. I remember one customer who disputed a water bill that he believed was incorrect. The complaint remained unresolved, and subsequent bills continued to accumulate. Eventually, the customer's water supply was disconnected for non-payment. Rather than accepting the disconnection, the customer reconnected himself at night and removed the connection before morning inspections. When asked why, his response was simple: "I will continue to drink this water until my issue is resolved." Viewed in isolation, the problem appeared to be an unauthorized reconnection. Looking more closely, however, revealed a much longer chain involving customer engagement, complaint handling, communication, and dispute resolution. The illegal reconnection became the visible event, but not where the problem began.
Looking Beneath the Surface
This experience reinforced an important lesson. Utilities often respond to the events they can see. They repair leaks, disconnect illegal connections, replace damaged infrastructure, strengthen enforcement, and improve billing systems. These interventions are necessary, but they often address the point where the problem becomes visible rather than the conditions that allowed it to develop. A similar lesson emerged from another experience involving repeated vandalism of an air valve located along a transmission pipeline. The utility repeatedly repaired and replaced the damaged infrastructure, yet the vandalism continued. Looking beyond the event revealed a broader picture. The pipeline passed through a pastoralist community without access to a formal water connection. Breaking the air valve allowed water to collect for livestock at the chamber. These experiences reinforced an important realization that similar operational problems can emerge from very different underlying conditions. Unless utilities understand those conditions, they may continue responding to recurring events while the drivers beneath them remain unchanged.
The Conditions Beneath the Symptoms
Looking beneath the visible symptoms reveals that the same operational problems rarely emerge in isolation. They are shaped by conditions that influence how utilities make decisions, allocate resources, learn from experience, and build relationships with the communities they serve. Governance establishes the structures within which decisions are made, while leadership shapes how those structures are implemented and sustained. Organizational capacity determines whether utilities can translate knowledge into action and continuously improve performance. Public trust shapes how customers respond to utility actions, influencing cooperation, reporting, payment, infrastructure protection, and compliance. These conditions rarely operate independently. Weakness in one can quickly influence the others, creating patterns that become visible through everyday operational challenges. Sustainable NRW reduction therefore depends less on solving isolated events than on strengthening the conditions that shape how the entire system functions over time.
The Real Root Cause of NRW
One of the greatest challenges in reducing NRW is the assumption that it has a single root cause. Utilities frequently focus on repairing leaks, managing pressures, replacing meters, disconnecting illegal connections, or improving billing systems. While these interventions are essential, they rarely address the conditions that allow the same problems to recur.
Using the Five Whys method, Non-Revenue Water (NRW) persists because water is lost through leaks, unauthorized consumption, meter inaccuracies, and billing inefficiencies. These losses continue because utilities often focus on addressing visible operational problems rather than the underlying conditions that create them. Beneath these technical symptoms lie fragmented governance, weak information systems, poor accountability, misaligned stakeholder incentives, and ineffective operational decision-making. These weaknesses are reinforced by limited coordination, low public trust, competing institutional priorities, and inadequate information sharing among utilities, regulators, governments, contractors, and customers. Ultimately, NRW persists because it is managed primarily as a technical problem rather than as an interconnected governance system. As a result, persistent NRW is the outcome of reinforcing weaknesses in governance, information, trust, coordination, and institutional relationships that sustain water losses over time.
Looking beyond the symptoms therefore focused on identifying the conditions that continue to reproduce NRW. Sustainable NRW reduction begins not by addressing only the visible operational problems, but by strengthening the underlying conditions from which they emerge. Figure 1 below illustrates this relationship through a tree analogy. The visible NRW problems are represented by the branches and leaves. The trunk represents the behaviors of customers, staff, and leaders, and the deeper interacting system conditions are represented by the roots. The diagram therefore reinforces that sustainable NRW reduction depends not only on resolving operational problems but also on strengthening the governance, leadership, accountability, public trust, organizational learning, and capacity that continuously shape system performance.
Implications for NRW Management
Looking beyond the symptoms does not diminish the importance of technical interventions; rather, it places them within the broader system that determines whether they succeed or not. Leaks still need to be repaired, illegal connections addressed, infrastructure protected, and billing systems improved. These interventions remain essential for improving operational performance. However, their effectiveness depends on the organizational and institutional environment within which they are implemented. Strong governance, effective leadership, organizational learning, trusted customer relationships, and a culture of accountability create the conditions that enable technical interventions to deliver lasting results. Sustainable NRW reduction therefore depends not only on solving today's operational problems, but also on strengthening the conditions that influence how tomorrow's problems emerge and are managed.
Reflection
Preparing this article has challenged me to rethink my interpretation of persistent NRW. Throughout my experience in the water sector, I have encountered leaking pipes, illegal connections, disputed bills, vandalized infrastructure, poor workmanship, and many other operational challenges. At first, these appeared to be the problems demanding attention. Looking more closely, however, I have come to see them differently. More often than not, they were the visible expression of deeper conditions that had been developing within the system long before the event itself occurred. Each experience described in this article pointed to the same lesson. What first appeared to be the problem eventually became a clue pointing toward something much deeper. For me, the lesson is clear. Sustainable NRW reduction is not achieved simply by becoming better at responding to visible problems. It begins by understanding and strengthening the conditions that continually shape those problems. The visible problem is rarely where the story begins, but it is often where we choose to stop looking.
Author: Ernest Chea I Email: ernest.chea@strathmore.edu
SiBI Institute Extern, PhD Candidate, Social Marketing, Strathmore University Business School
Mentor: David Tsetse, Ph.D., Founder and President I SiBI Institute
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