Agenda - Public Works Committee - 09/16/2008

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CASE # UPDATE ON WATBR MIETE~ ~~CHANGE B~Q~~A~ B;y» Jahn Nelsen, Utilities Supervisor Background. In late February 2008. the Public Warks Committee and City Council approved a five year replacement project involving all water meters in the City of Ramsey: Each year Public Works personal will. be exchanging approximately 744 water meters to a radio read meter. This exchange pragram will benefit the City by exchanging meters that were past there life expectancy, it will also make it possible for Public Warks staff to da water meter readings in house by doing this we will also eliminate the need to contract out meter readings. Currently City staff has sent out hundreds of letters to residents requesting them. to schedule a time for utility personal to make the exchange.- Staff has also sent out-many second and third notices, left door hangers and even went door to Boar to make the .exchanges. With the exception of only a few non responders the pragram is on schedule far the 2008 portion of the program: As oaf September 4`"' the utilities department has exchanged 502 water meters/registers and we have added 84 new radio read accounts to our City system. Meter reading The Utility department has currently read all the new radio read accounts twice. 1n Marcli staff read 168 meters and in June they read 400 accounts and it took less than two hours to read all of them. We did however have two accounts that would not read and fortunately far us both, residents were home and we made repairs that day. Neptune shortly after our last reading had a recall for "battery life" on some of the meters that we already installed. Northern Water Supply is our .distributer and has agreed to ,assist in several ways to replace any that fail in the field. Leak Detection One great feature with the Neptune a-coder i900 meters is the leak detection status. These new meters will alert us if there is an intermittent or continuous leak at the business ar home and it will also tell us haw many days floe leak occurred. In the June readings we found 23 meters that had a continuous leak, Staff drafted a letter stating the issues relating this situation and sent out letters to each household and business, we received several phone calls back from. concerned citizens and each of them were going to nrxake an. effort to remedy the situation and thanked us for the information staff provided. exchanged meters -With. help from our seasonal staff we were able to disassemble all the old water meters by removing all the plastic, nuts and bolts. 0n August $~' we recycled 1,754 pounds of clean brass and received $3,773.16 and returned this money back into the water utility fund, 59