In late December, Paris, Ill. water commissioner David Morgan reported that the city was receiving automatic meter reading equipment for customer water meters— at no cost.
The Paris Water Utility is currently in its second year of a three-year program to equip all water meters with remote-reading capability. According to city officials, the conversion to AMR will reduce the time and labor-consuming process of manually reading each of the city’s more than 4,000 meters, to generate monthly bills. The city of Paris was awarded the free AMR systems when the manufacturer of the remote transmitters attached to each meter went out of business.
In order to fulfill the remaining contract, the supplier, Illinois Meter, agreed to provide alternate equipment. Paris City officials said the new AMR equipment is better and more expensive, but comes at the original contract cost to the city.
As of presstime, about 1,500 meters already have been converted, and the rest are scheduled to the changed in early 2005.
When done, water bills will reflect accurate counts to within a few days of billing.
Additionally, Paris city officials reported that there also might be the opportunity to install software programs that identify potential leaks, even before customers are aware of a problem.
