By Ted Schnell • BocaJump | Dec. 16, 2011
About two decades or so ago, cities and towns turned to technology to automate the task of reading water meters. Before then, a worker would have to visit each home either to read the meter manually or use a hand-held device to take a reading from outside the home.
Elgin and many other communities at that time took advantage of what then was cutting edge technology, installing units onto water meters inside buildings. The units were wired into each building’s telephone line, and once a month, the devices would call in a meter reading to the water department for billing purposes.
But the increasingly ubiquitous cellphone is changing that.
Many people are abandoning residential telephone service — or land lines — in favor of cellphones and smartphones. It is, after all, more convenient to take your phone with you and avoid missing important calls.
Elgin has been adapting to the changing tide, and for the past six years has been replacing the telephone-linked units with Wi-Fi modules that broadcast a weak, unique wireless signal that can be picked up by a laptop carried in a city vehicle being driven past the building.
“We first started putting in Orions (the Wi-Fi capable modules) in 2006 at a cost of $110.00 per unit,” said Elgin Water Director Kyla Jacobsen. “To date this year we have changed over 4,150 units.”
The costs of the individual modules vary depending on their size, she said. The city has spent about $455,000 on the devices this year.
“It’s an ongoing process,” she continued. “So many people are going away from (land-line) telephones, and we can’t have a mixed system” for reading water meters.
City officials hope one day to have in place a citywide Wi-Fi system to enable computers to tap into the Internet from virtually anywhere in town. That vision is what led to the city’s adoption of the Orion units, Jacobsen said, because once that is achieved, water meter readings can be completely automated as they were before.
But the hope for a citywide Wi-Fi network hangs on Elgin’s future finances. The city is nearing the adoption of a 2012 budget that, in its present form, includes cuts in spending and a number of new taxes and fees to plug a revenue gap of as much as $13 million.
While that may delay implementation of a citywide Wi-Fi network, Jacobsen said the water department remains able to use the new technology.
Once a month, a city vehicle is driven through each neighborhood where the modules have been installed. A laptop in the vehicle, she said, is pre-programmed to link to the Orion devices at specific addresses to gather the water meter data. It’s certainly not as cost-effective as a completely automated process, but for now it works and is what needs to be done. The land-line technology is rendering the old system obsolete.
