How your meter is read

Each month, a Water Department employee will drive or walk by your home and receive your meter reading with an electronic receiver. Each meter is equipped with a radio transmitter that sends the reading to the receiving device. The meters still have a manual display for you to view. Some customers like to read their own meters periodically to monitor their consumption. All the radio does is look at the reading and send it to us.

This device saves many hundreds of hours of labor when compared to the manual system of using six men for three days with pencil and paper. This keeps the reading costs to a minimum and allows the employees more time to maintain service lines, vehicles, heavy equipment, sixty miles of water main, nine hundred valves, five hundred hydrants, nine wells, three water plants and eighteen buildings.

This reading system also increased safety as it reduced time that employees are exposed to extreme hot and cold weather, rain, snow, ice, dogs, fences, bushes and even pesky bees! Slipping incidents and injuries have been nearly eliminated. It also eliminated us startling you by appearing in your back yards when you least expect it. That gave both of us a jolt at times! We appreciate your patience as we had to enter every home and business to make the conversion to the new reading system.

Reading Dates

We generally try to read in the middle of the month. If we have problems in the distribution system, we may have to adjust this time. Weather may also affect our reading start time. Generally however, we try to start reading on the fourteenth (14th) day of each month and try to be finished by the seventeenth (17th).