By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
If a Hays water line starts leaking, it may take up to 30 days for city water meter readers to detect it. During that time, a lot of water can be wasted.
"Currently, we have four staff members who walk Mondays and touch each of the city's 8,500 water meters once a month using a handheld computer to take a reading," said Collin Bielser, deputy city manager.
City staff is proposing replacing the metering system with advanced metering infrastructure that will automatically read the system via radio frequency signals every 15 minutes.
"This new technology enables two-way radio frequency communication between the meters and the utility building office, which would eliminate this task," Bielser said.
The four employees would be reassigned to other Department of Water Resources areas.
Out of 10 vetted proposals, the recommended bid is $4.44 million for the Sensus system from Core & Main, McPherson. It includes hiring a project manager with Tyler Technologies for $35,000 to assist with integration with the city's billing software. The bid is about $551,000 below the budget of $5 million.
The project would not require a rate increase for Hays water customers.
A utility bond will be issued to pay for the project by taking advantage of an expiring 2009 utility system bond payment this year. A 20-year bond is anticipated.
The technology has been around for years and is used by Garden City, Derby, Lawrence, Mulvane, Junction City and Abilene. Hays already uses the Sensus meters in other areas of operation and has a local representative. Hays-based Midwest Energy also utilizes advanced metering infrastructure for its electric and gas meters.
"Unlike today, where meters are read every 30 days or so, this technology provides continuous monitoring, proactively detecting malfunctions in the meter or with the water usage," said Jeff Crispin, director of water resources. "We'll be able to see things beyond 30-day increments."
The customer is also able to monitor their water usage in real-time.
If approved during Thursday's Hays City Commission meeting, the system would be installed by a third party beginning later this year and be completed by mid-2025. Core & Main provides a maximum 20-year warranty for the meters and transmitter devices.
In addition to improved efficiencies in the water department and the city clerk's billing departments, "we're potentially saving our community water, possibly finding [leaks] faster, and better utilizing staff," said Mayor Shaun Musil.
"This is really, really exciting," said Sandy Jacobs, vice-mayor. "Why didn't we do this sooner?"
"Mainly, the reason it didn't happen is money," said Toby Dougherty, city manager, "because previous commissions weren't interested in raising rates for this to happen. And then, most recently, there was a multi-year rate increase to deal with a backlog of maintenance items tied in with the rebuild of the wastewater facility.
"There wasn't much will on our part at that time to bring forward a $5 million expenditure that translated into another rate increase. This allows the timing perfectly. We have bonds rolling off. We can incur the debt and not affect those rates."
"It's a lot of work to get to this point," said Crispin. "Several of our departments have been looking at it off and on the past 10 years.