Marion to replace water meters

Faulty antennas will require city-wide switch

news@theeveningtimes.com

Marion will have to replace its cellular-based water meters that it purchased five years ago with new meters due to faulty antennas which transmit the data.

Mayor Frank Fogleman said they were informed by Henard Utility Products that there is a flaw with the meters and that the company would upgrade the meters with new ones, and extend the city’s warranty.

“The battery is dying in the antenna,” Fogleman said. “There is an embedded chip in them which is encased inside the antenna.

So they can’t just come in and replace the chip like you would in a cell phone.” Marion spent $1.3 million in 2014 to replace all of its old radio read water meters with ones that use cellular- based data collection.

The city has about 5,300 water meters and was fiveand- a-half years into the 11 year-warranty which would have allowed them to replace meters with new ones for two dollars per meter.

The Water and Sewer Committee met with representatives from Henard Utility Products who agreed to replace the meters in quarterly installments and pro-rate the original 11 year-warranty on the meter replacement, which means the city will only have to pay the two dollars for new ones. The company will also reset the warranty for another ten years and keep the same technology fee rate at 85 cents per meter.

“The supplier has offered us a deal that I think is attractive,” Fogleman said. “We still have to pay two dollars per meter, but we get a new warranty and an additional five years on the technology fee locked in at that rate.”

Fogleman said the city will be saving four cents per meter per month on the technology charge which will pay for the new meters because they are getting an extra five years on the warranty.

“They pointed out that they are charging four cents per month more than what we committed to,” Fogleman said. “So we are saving about $200 a month., so that’s $2,400 a year. And because we get that five extra years, that just about pays for the $10,600 to do this.”

Fogleman said the new meters have upgraded technology which transmits water use data every 15 minutes rather than hourly.

The water department will install the new meters.

Fogleman said he expects to receive the first shipment of the new meters before the end of the year.

“I have signed the papers and we anticipate the first shipment between now and the end of December,” Fogleman said.