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Town reviews water-meter modernization after weekend main break
Summary
Utility staff described a major weekend main break and unrevealed/unmapped lines; a vendor demonstrated cellular meter options that the board agreed to pilot in a short trial to improve leak detection and customer access to usage data.
Utility staff reported a major water main break over the holiday weekend that left portions of town without service and exposed previously unmapped lines, prompting discussion of both emergency response and longer-term system improvements.
"We found it... we have a new line now that we did not know we had in our system," said Utility staff (S5), describing search-and-repair work that began Saturday and concluded after crews located and fixed the leak early Sunday. The speaker thanked employees and volunteers who worked into the holiday and urged patience from affected residents.
After the report, Matthew Green, sales manager for Midwest Meter (S3), presented advanced metering infrastructure options. He described retrofit and replacement approaches, the technical difference between nutating-disc and ultrasonic meters, and the benefits of a cellular endpoint that transmits frequent reads (96 reads per day) and powers customer-facing apps for near–real-time leak alerts.
"If you go to cellular... we're able to see daily if somebody has a potential leak, whereas right now it's that 30-day cycle," Matthew Green (S3) said, explaining how the vendor’s cloud platform and the town’s existing Beacon software can be used for earlier detection.
Vendor staff also noted a nominal cloud/cellular service charge (presented as about $1.03 per account per month in the vendor’s pricing outline) and discussed warranty and failure rates. Staff asked operational questions about tampering, meter life, and which existing registers require replacement; the vendor said existing register heads can often be retrofitted with new transmitters to enable cellular reporting without replacing the full meter body.
The board agreed to a short trial of the proposed meters (the meeting record shows a 3-month trial was discussed), with follow-up at a subsequent meeting to review performance and costs.
Next steps: staff will coordinate the trial installation, track performance in Beacon, and bring results back to the board for a formal recommendation. The meeting record does not show a formal vote authorizing procurement; procurement details and any final purchasing decision remain to be documented.
