Greenwood upgrading meter technology
The city of Greenwood will spend as much as $10,000 to begin a gradual changeover to a more automated water meter reading system. The change will eliminate the need for employees to walk to houses to manually read meters as they now do every three months.
The City Council at an April 21 meeting approved the purchase of 50 radio units to be placed on houses, a command link that will be carried in a city vehicle to remotely read the meters, and an accompanying software upgrade. The purchase will be the start of a project to retrofit all 470 meters in the city with the units. Each radio unit costs about $135, so the cost of updating the rest of the city at some point could be an additional $56,000.
Greenwood’s current method of obtaining quarterly water usage meters is to have employees walk to each residence or business to manually gather the data. That information is then relayed to the city clerk’s office where bills are prepared.
With the new system, Utility Director Trent Johnson said an employee will only have to drive a vehicle through a neighborhood, and the command link carried inside will automatically pull data from the radio units to be attached to current meters.
“We can basically just drive around and they’ll collect information,” Johnson said.
Additionally, the new system will be able to collect more data on usage. It will also perform functions such as detecting continually moving meters that could be a sign of a water leak.
The new radio units will work with the city’s existing meters. A worker will add a radio unit to the meter and will not have to enter homes to do so.
The Council’s Public Works Committee recently reviewed a proposal from Core & Main of Hudson for the upgrade project. The committee recommended the purchase of just 50 units at this time.
“The nice thing about this is we can do this a little at a time,” Johnson said. “We just thought we’d do a little bit at a time.”
The first units will be placed at addresses within city limits on the west side of the Black River, and at other “places that are hard to get to” on the west side of the city, Johnson said.
When the new units are installed, an employee will not have to wade through snow or enter private yards to see meters. In the past, Johnson said, they have dealt with dogs, and some residents have even called police when noticing someone on their property. “Nowadays you have to be a little more careful with that,” Johnson said.
The money for the upgrade will come from water usage revenue and not property taxes.
In other business at its April 21 meeting, the Council approved a proposal from an area veterans’ unit to install and dedicate a flagpole and soldier’s cross silhouette on the Branstiter “Old Streets of Greenwood” museum property on South Main Street.
The group has already placed more than 150 flag poles in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, mostly at cemeteries where veterans are buried. The group will cover the cost of the flag pole and silhouette unit and of installing it. A dedication is scheduled for the afternoon of June 12.
The Council also approved a bid from American Asphalt for $48,867 for summer paving work. The main job will be on Linda Lane in the subdivision on the north side of the city along the river. Also approved was a bid from Harmon Concrete for $21,188 for curb and gutter, again for Linda Lane and scattered patching throughout the city.
