Villa Park adopts AquaHawk portal to give residents real-time water-usage alerts

The Village of Villa Park voted to authorize a customer portal, AquaHawk, intended to let residents view real-time water usage, set alerts for high usage and receive messages by phone, text or email.

Assistant Village Manager Mike Wareham, responding to trustee questions, said staff has replaced most large meters and more than half of smaller meters with units that support detailed readings. Wareham said the system can export usage every 14 minutes on some devices and will allow residents to set custom thresholds and receive notifications by call, text or email. He added the portal integrates with the village's BSNA billing software so residents can pay online without a separate login.

Trustees asked about rollout, cost and messaging. Trustee Kumar noted residents can face steep surprise bills from leaks and said a clear rollout and marketing plan was essential. “I think it is a great service for our residents that they're getting from Villa Park,” Kumar said. Trustee Sabri asked about total cost; staff estimated a one-time setup of $17,500 plus an annual fee of $15,132 and said the village has roughly 7,400 accounts, which equates to about $2 per account per year during steady-state operations.

Staff said implementation is expected to take about five weeks and that marketing will use utility-bill inserts, e-newsletters, the village website and targeted messages to accounts that experience high usage. The board approved the resolution by roll call. Staff will return invoices and confirm whether additional messaging modules will incur extra costs if message-volume thresholds are exceeded.

Next steps: staff will finalize vendor integration, schedule the five-week implementation, prepare resident-facing materials and confirm message allowances and cost options for group messaging.