LANSING – The radar technology developed to find water on Mars is cheaper and more effective in detecting leaks in public water systems compared to traditional ones. And now it has arrived in Michigan.

The Great Lakes Water Authority is doing a pilot project in collaboration with Asterra, an Israeli company, to get data on water leaks and share the results with other municipalities.

Communities that already participate in the project are Detroit, Livonia, Pontiac, Redford Township and Walled Lake.

The company used synthetic aperture radar or SAR on a hundred to a couple of hundred miles of water lines in each place: 600 miles in total.

The authority draws water from Lake Huron and the Detroit River and provides water to parts or all of Wayne, Monroe, Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair, Genesee, Lapeer and Washtenaw counties.

Eric Trerotola, Asterra’s sales manager for North America, explained the water loss numbers and how the company employs satellites and artificial intelligence to detect leaks.

Every year, U.S. water systems lose 2.1 trillion gallons, Trerotola said, the equivalent of “33 days of continuous flow of Niagara Falls.”

Waste of electricity and treatment chemicals is tied to loss of water too, and that costs billions of dollars annually, Trerotola said.

He added, “Leaks don’t fix themselves. They either persist or they get worse.”

Now Asterra employs SAR in 64 countries.

The company says it has so far saved over 368 billion gallons and found over 100,000 leaks worldwide.

Traditionally, utility companies find leaks by walking their entire system and looking for drops in pressure, “listening” to pipes and putting boots on the ground to find and repair leaks.

Listening to leaks is literal. Leaks create high-pitched noise that gets picked up by sensors – ground microphones, said John Norton, the director of energy, research and innovation at the Great Lakes Water Authority

The sound travels through metal pipes and the frequency changes, depending on how far away listeners are from the leak.

Trerotola said, “They have to go listen, and it’s painstaking, hundreds of miles.”