Fairfield to explore new water meter technology

FAIRFIELD — The City of Fairfield will embark on a trial run of new technology for the city’s water meters.

Fairfield Water Department Superintendent Steve Redinger addressed the Fairfield City Council Monday about a new type of water meter that the city plans to roll out later this year in a select part of town. If it goes well, the city could purchase the new meters for all of Fairfield.

The city plans to purchase 81 water meters for residents of Suburban Heights on the west edge of town. These new water meters will transmit their usage data through Verizon to city hall daily during off-peak hours. Residents with these meters can get an app for their smartphone that would allow them to track their water usage daily, and be alerted to any jumps in their usage that could be caused by a leak.

Redinger said these 81 meters will cost about $31,000, and he hopes to have them installed by the end of the year. If successful, these meters could save the city thousands of dollars in man hours, since employees would no longer have to spend time collecting usage data.

The city’s current water meters transmit their usage data using radio waves, but these transmissions are very short, so employees have to be right next to the house, or a house or two over, in order for their receives to get this data. Sometimes city staff can collect this data by driving around town and collecting it from a vehicle, but Redinger said most of the time an employee has to walk by a house to receive the radio transmission.

Redinger said he has six employees in the water department, three who work at the plant and three who work in distribution. To collect usage data, he sends two or three of them out at a time, and collectively the water department employees spend 128 hours per month collecting usage data. Redinger said that if these new water meters are adopted all over town — which has about 5,000 water meters in all — that number of staff hours devoted to collecting usage data would fall to zero.

“Our guys could take on other duties that they have to push back because they have to take time out of their day to read meters,” Redinger said.

The company offering these new meters is called Metron Farnier, based in Boulder, Colorado. Redinger said he’s optimistic about the technology working in Fairfield, since other local jurisdictions have already adopted it.

“Rathbun Rural Water has 20,000 customers, and they’ve installed 8,000 of these meters. They really like the system,” Redinger said. “Ottumwa is installing these meters, too.”

Redinger said these new meters would not only save his staff time, but they would also be great for quickly identifying water leaks since a leak would be discovered within a day instead of having to wait for the monthly readings like the city is doing now.

“We have some people who go to Florida over the winter, and if they get a leak and nobody is around, there’s going to be a flood,” Redinger said. “If they have this app on their phone, they will get an alert, and the girls at city hall would also get an alert, so they could get ahold of the homeowner to ask if something is going on.”

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com