(9/22) The Woodsboro Town Council approved a motion to move toward investigating options to replace the obsolete current water meter reader system with a modern remote read capability.
The town's current water reading system is from 2006, "and it really has become obsolete," Burgess Heath Barnes said. While the meters still work, the meter reading system itself is completely outdated.
The current process requests the town staff to download software into a ‘remote reader’ and then drive around town. At each home, the ‘remote reader’ sends a signal to the home’s water meter transmitter. The transmitter responds to the signal with the number of gallons of water used since it was last interrogated. Once all the meters are read, town staff then has to upload all the readings into another system, which then is used to process the billing for the water; it is a time-consuming process all around.
Unfortunately , the software currently used by the remote reader and water meter transmitters is no longer supported, and the company that made it is out of date, so there is no option to update it to current standards, or for town staff to get technical support if issues do develop.
If the water meeting software system does crash, town staff would be faced with having to physically read all 450+ meters, which would adversely impact the ability to incorporate the readings into the town software used to perform water and sewer billing, which is essential for the department’s revenue.
To address the issue, the town would not need to change out the actual meter, but just the transmitters that sit on top of the water meters and the remote reader used by the staff.
The town staff told the town council that they have received an initial possible cost estimate of $152,252 to accomplish the upgrades.
An updated system would not only alleviate concern over the ability to read meters in a timely fashion; saving time on reading water meters also saves the town money, Barnes explained.
American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding can be used to fund the replacement. With other projects that have already been approved, Woodsboro currently has about $400,000 in ARPA funding available, Barnes said.
Town staff said they are talking to staff in Walkersville, which, in April, updated its own water meter reading system after lengthy struggle. Walkersville’s new system allows the town staff to interrogate all water meters in the town remotely, using three cell towers.
Because the new Walkersville system is electronic, town staff can read the water meters from Town Hall. Walkersville’s system also allows its residents to monitor their water usage, and even send them updates via email about their usage and bills. Walkersville’s new systems also allow residents to pay their water bill on-line.
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