The city of Slidell has embarked on an ambitious $2.2 million program to upgrade the city’s water metering and billing through a new system that will allow drive-by readings at all of Slidell’s residential, commercial and institutional meter sites.

Triton Water Technologies employees in the latter part of June began installing almost 14,000 specialized meters manufactured by Badger Meter Inc. in different areas of the city. To date, about 2,000 have been installed.

Triton has six months to complete the work. When done, a Water and Sewer Division employee will be able to take the reading for the entire city in less than a day, Public Operations Director Mike Noto said. That task currently takes Slidell’s five-person team of meter readers 12 days to complete.

Angie Phillips of Badger Meter points to a series of green dots on the computer, indicating meters that have been read by the city'€™s new wireless meter reading system. (Staff Photo by Anne Lautzenheiser)

“This is an innovative program that many communities with public water and sewer utilities are beginning to consider and implement,” Slidell Mayor Ben Morris said. “We’re really going to save some time and money. But it’s also important for our citizens to understand that their bills may be going up a little or down a little from the norm because of the greater accuracy.”

Once the program goes online, city employees no longer will have to park their vehicles, get out and pull up the grate in the sidewalk or servitude to physically record the usage from the gauge attached to the piping and control valve. Instead, with the help of a specially programmed laptop computer and a GPS device in their car, they can record the usage on each meter from as far as 300 feet away as they drive along city streets.

The driver won’t have to travel every street in the city because the computer isn’t picking up the meters one at a time but rather every transmitting meter within range of the receiver, according to Angie Phillips of Badger Meter.

“A radio signal sends the information to the computer via a dual-cone antenna that protrudes just above ground from the meter, which in itself is like a mini-computer,” said Phillips. “An antenna mounted atop the public vehicles then picks up the signal.”

The GPS street map shown on the laptop screen tracks the vehicle’s movement and small symbols change color as meters are approached and as they’re read. Different colors also indicate an apparent water leak or other problem. However, different tones tell the driver what’s going on so that he or she doesn’t have to keep looking at the monitor, Phillips noted.

The system already has been tested and employees have been trained in how to use it. Phillips and Joe Cassisa of Triton gave a handful of city officials and the news media a demonstration tour of it Thursday along Anna Street in Eagle Point subdivision.

The meters, which are powered by batteries guaranteed for up to 20 years, have the capability of providing the city with up to five years of information from each meter. With the new program, the water distribution system can be monitored to determine individual usage levels during different periods, detect leaks and other problems.

The new system is expected to save the city at least $450,000 a year once fully operational, because of its accuracy, problem-detection capabilities and reduction in labor costs, Noto said. Perhaps more importantly, city officials add, no employee will lose his or her job in a city that has been perpetually under-staffed since Hurricane Katrina almost three years ago.

“No human element is involved in reading the information, so there’s virtually no chance for error,” Noto said.

Mayor Morris has estimated that the city is losing about 20 percent of its potable water supply through leakage, inaccurate meter readings and theft.

For the program, Slidell is being broken up in routes of 200 to 500 meters each through which the system will come on line in stages. Once installations are finished on a given route, water billings and, indirectly, sewer service billings the following month and thereafter will be based on the drive-by readings.

Purchase of the meters, programmed laptops and installation work is being paid for with proceeds from the sale of a 10-year, low-interest certificate of indebtedness for $1.97 million. The bonds will be repaid with the anticipated extra revenue generated by the new system.

The Slidell City Council in January approved borrowing the $1.97 million for the program. The remaining $200,000 or so is coming from a city fund balance.

As Morris noted recently, more and more local governments that provide their own utilities are implementing such programs.

Among them in recent years is St. John the Baptist Parish in 2006 and the city of Covington in 2007.

The mayor signaled the council about his administration’s interest in pursuing the new water meter program a year ago, when the council approved increases in water system connection and metering fees. The council at the time also upped the fines for damaging or tampering with the meters and for blocking meter boxes.