Officials from the City of Hattiesburg are implementing the first steps on the way to upgrading approximately 14,000 water meters throughout the city, which is expected to streamline the meter-reading process and eliminate the issues that some customers have seen with longer-than-usual billing cycles.
The issue was discussed at the March 4 work session of Hattiesburg City Council during a presentation led by Mayor Toby Barker and Alan Howe, who serves as director of the city’s Water and Sewer Department. Barker said many of the dials and endpoints on the current water meters – which transmit water usage to city workers driving by the meters in trucks – are beginning to go out after 15 years of service.
“This means that while the meter (itself) is working, our staff are having to go out and read more and more meters manually, particularly in recent months over the past year,” Barker said. “In the case of this past month, our staff was having to read so many meters manually that the billing cycle was thrown off, so instead of a 30- or 31-day cycle, it became a 40-day billing cycle for some residents, because that’s how long it took us to read so many meters manually.
“That means that some bills were higher, because (those residents) were being billed for more days. They won’t be double-billed for that; that’s just kind of where that window came from.”
Howe said the water department staff is currently manually reading approximately 8,600 water meters after 6,400 pieces of equipment malfunctioned last year.
“The year before that was a thousand-plus (that went out),” he said. “The meters work; it’s just the endpoints that are going out.
“So the computer doesn’t pick up a read on those, so we have to go and manually read them.”
Officials began budgeting for the new dials and endpoints approximately three years ago, when that equipment first began to malfunction. After some supply chain delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, work on the upgrades is expected to begin sometime this summer.
If all goes according to plan, the project will take between eight to 12 months.
The current water meters were installed in 2009; prior to that, all meters were manually read. The upgrades will allow meter readings to be transferred directly to the water department and will negate the current need for workers to drive through the city to collect that data.
The new equipment also will provide customers with real-time access to water meter readings, including daily, weekly and monthly water usage. The technology also will be able to alert customers is a leak is detected in their home or business.
“Peoples’ bills are not going to go up because of this – it’s money that we’ve already got budgeted that’s going to be transferred to debt service,” Barker said. “We’re going to start financing to replace the entire city, especially residential service, to a new cellular device.
“This will have a 20-year warranty, 10 of which is full, and then it pro-rates down after that. Instead of an incremental approach to changing out dials and endpoints for people that have issues with their individual meters, we’re going to (do this) city-wide.”
Barker said some customers may not go back to the regular 30-day billing cycle for several months because of the time required to perform the work.
“We anticipate that by the time we go through the financing part of this – taking out the bond, borrowing against the money we already have budgeted, and the bid process for the actual meters and the bid for the actual service – it may be mid-summer,” he said. “You won’t be billed twice – it’s just that instead of a 30-day billing cycle, it’s 40-day, and eventually it will balance out.”
Anyone with questions about their water meters or service is welcome to call the city’s Action Line at (601) 545-4500 or the Water and Sewer Department at (601) 545-4530.
