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Agency urges caution on bill to mandate household water meters, recommends water-supplier testimony
Summary
An Agency of Natural Resources official told the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee that S.213’s cyber provisions have largely been addressed but warned the bill could impose burdens on small, often volunteer-run community water systems and recommended hearing from public works and water suppliers before advancing.
Rep. Kathleen James convened the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on March 26, where Brian Redmond, director of the Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division at the Agency of Natural Resources’ Department of Environmental Conservation, testified on S.213, a bill that would affect individual service-line water metering and include cyber-security provisions.
Redmond provided context on Vermont’s public water systems, saying there are about 1,400 systems statewide: roughly 700 transient non-community systems (restaurants, motels, campgrounds) and about 400 community systems such as schools, day‑care facilities and municipal suppliers. He described two meter types: production (master) meters that measure total finished water produced and service meters that measure individual service connections — the latter being the primary focus of S.213.
“State requirements require that public water systems have the ability to measure and monitor finished water,” Redmond said, adding that the agency does not currently mandate individual service-line meters or set specifications for installing, maintaining or reading them. He said billing and rate-setting are typically handled at the utility or local level.
Redmond told the committee advanced metering technology can ease reading and monitoring but recommended caution because many service meters are located in basements or crawlspaces to avoid freezing and are on customer-owned service lines, which raises cost and access issues for suppliers. He also said, based on discussions with water suppliers and more than a decade overseeing water regulation, he had not been contacted about cybersecurity incidents tied to metering and judges the cyber risk from advanced metering to be low.
On the bill’s language, Redmond said ANR’s concerns about the cybersecurity provisions (section 2) were largely addressed by Senate amendments and that ANR supports those changes. He recommended decoupling customer-rights provisions from ANR permit language or placing them in a standalone statutory section if the committee advances the measure.
Redmond urged the committee to hear from water suppliers and public works officials, naming Joe Duncan of the Champlain Water District, Megan Moyer (assistant public works director, Burlington), and Rick Hall (town public works) as potential witnesses who could speak to operational impacts. Committee members asked how widespread service or “smart” meters are, whether customers can request removal, and what additional burden metering would place on small districts; Redmond said those are best addressed by the suppliers themselves and committed to submitting written testimony.
The committee paused to arrange for Secretary Riley Hughes and other witnesses; Liz Royer and others indicated they would submit written testimony. No formal motion or vote on S.213 occurred during the session.
Next steps: the agency will file written testimony, and the committee expects to schedule supplier and public‑works testimony before moving forward on the bill.
