Knox Water Superintendent Todd Gardner is looking into replacing some older meters that better meet the need of the building’s user.
Gardner told the Knox Board of Public Works members last week that the revenue loss is quite steep.
“For instance, we’ll have an apartment complex that has a two-inch positive displacement meter and that type of meter won’t register water until it hits about two-and-a-half-gallons-a-minute flow. If you had a ten person unit and only one person gets up and flushes the toilet you’re not going to register that water. If one person opens the sink or takes a shower and it’s under that two-and-a-half or three gallons a minute, you’re probably not going to register any water going through. You start looking at the loss on that and it’s huge,” said Gardner.
He added that capturing this lost revenue is critical if the department wants to apply for any grants to help with project plans.
The water meter replacement is just another step in the process. He said he is going to start looking into putting in new meters and educating the users on the new meters and what they can expect when they are installed.
“When you put a new meter in their bill is going to go up. They’re not going up for any other reason besides they actually have to pay the water they’re going through. I’m looking at different meters and what we can put in that’s cost effective for us and got longevity on them and they’re accurate.”
The initial cost will be about $2,000 each, but Gardner said the meters will pay for themselves within a few months with the additional revenue from the accurate measure of water use.
There are about 20 to 30 meters that need to be replaced. He said two or three may be done this year with all of them to be replaced over a 10 year period.
When all the meters are replaced, Gardner suggested that it could prevent rate increases for a few years.
