Forest Park’s village council has approved a resolution to request consulting services to help the village replace manual water meters with digital ones.
Of the village’s 3,180 commercial and residential water meters, about 35% have digital displays, while the rest are manual meters. But the whole village will have digital water meters by the end of next year, according to Sal Stella, director of the village’s public works department.
The switch to digital water meters, Stella said, may increase bills by a few dollars.
“Once your meter does go digital, it catches every single drop,” Stella said. “Your bill might go up slightly, not dramatically.”
Water rates increased slightly for residents — no more than 30 cents for every 100 cubic feet of water — on June 1. This price increase wasn’t related to water meters, but a standard annual uptick in cost from the City of Chicago, where Forest Park gets its water.
The path to all-digital
Stella said that the village began replacing manual meters with digital ones around 2000. Since then, public works employees have identified water meters around town that are faulty or degrading and replace them annually.
The first digital water meters that the village installed more than 20 years ago were regular mechanical meters with a wireless system, Stella said. So rather than walking from house to house to read water meters, public works employees drive around town, pick up water meter usage data from their vehicle, and upload it to the village’s system to send out water bills.
Stella said the village has replaced about 400 manual meters, mostly smaller ones, with digital water meters during the past five years.
With the newest technology in water meters, the village plans to put antennas on its water towers and read water meters through radio signals. This way, public works employees won’t even have to drive around town to access the wireless meters, and all the data can be read from a computer in Village Hall.
These antennas will give the village a daily report on local water usage so staff can find any high or low usage areas where there might be faulty meters, helping the village identify internal operating inefficiencies.
The village is also going to introduce a customer portal to help residents keep track of their water usage in real time. Stella said this will come in handy when it comes to identifying leaks.
Right now, village employees manually read water meters about every two months. If a resident has a leak, it might be three months by the time their increased water bill is processed and sent to them. But digital readings cut out this delay.
“It’s helping my department as far as being more efficient,” Stella said. “It’s giving the customer more transparency on their end and giving them the option for alerts.”
Hiring a consultant
Though the village has conducted preliminary research for its changing water meter system, staff will soon contract either an energy services consultant or engineering consultant to help develop and implement its water meter replacement project.
The consultant will help create bid documents for vendor proposals, evaluate vendor offerings, and make a recommendation to the village. They will provide installation support with the water meters, including helping to acquire equipment and materials.
“They’re also going to be the ones that are going to get the best price for the meters for us,” Stella said.
Stella added that the consulting services will also consist of marketing to, and educating, residents.
Proposals for these consulting services are due Oct. 22. Stella said the village will likely choose a consultant within a month of that deadline and transition all of the village’s water meters to digital over the next year.
After the village has the stock of digital water meters, they’ll start scheduling appointments with residents to install them.
“It should be an easy transition,” Stella said of the switch from manual water meters. He adds that larger meters in more commercial areas will be targeted first, since they often have a higher rate of being faulty.
“You’re losing more water on those meters right now than you are on the smaller ones,” Stella said.