Water meters fall behind in tracking gallons

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

Charles City has a water meter problem. But it’s not risking overcharging residents, city officials say.

It might be undercharging them.

“As the meters get older they tend to slow down and not give as accurate of a reading,” interim water superintendent Cory Spieker said Thursday. “They’re more likely getting undercharged then overcharged with these meters…calcium deposits or anything like that build up, and after time they tend to read less accurate.”

Those deposits on water meters installed prior to 2010 have slowed the city’s ability to track and charge for water usage, Charles City Council members learned Wednesday evening as part of their agenda discussion on a replacement plan.

“There’s water flowing through there that’s not being accounted for. So that could make up for some of our water loss, basically water going through the meter that’s not getting paid for,” City Administrator Steve Diers told the council during a planning session.

Diers estimated that faulty meters run too slowly to track about 1 percent of the city’s water usage. A new meter/reader replacement plan would address those issues, Spieker told the council, giving the city a better understanding of water usage and cutting the need for manual inspections every time a reader fails.

It’s difficult to quantify how much revenue the city is losing through aged meters, Diers said.

“Each one ages differently. I don’t know if you can say, ‘this one’s 30 years old so we’ve lost 10 percent.’ It’s hard to say,” Diers said.

“We have the (meters) that have zero consumption, we’d replace those meters, they’re not even picking up 1,000 gallons a month, and then the readers that aren’t reading will be gone,” Spieker said.

The new plan would replace faulty remote water meter-readers purchased in 2010, and ease the city into a regular schedule of replacements as water meters outlive their typical 20-year lifespan. Almost 1,400 pre-2010 water meters in town are currently past their useful life, Diers told the council.

“I don’t think we’re going to recapture that much water,” council member Michael Hammond said. “To me, it’s more about not having to waste the time of Cory and his group going out and messing with these non-functioning units. That’s where we’re going to make our money or save our money.”