News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Livingston will install new automatic water readers to mitigate water loss issues.
J.R. Wauford and Associates President Greg Davenport said the Monroe and Alpine areas have been identified to be the areas with the greatest need and will get the readers first. He said contractors will install zone readers that constantly listen for and identify leaks.
“Livingston has leaks in its water system,” Davenport said. “It’s not unusual. Every town has them. You have to work aggressively to keep these, I guess, keep leaks at bay. It’s a generational type of thing to stay after this.”
Davenport said the $1.5 million project will be funded largely by ARP funding, with the city paying the 10 percent match of some $256,000. He said Livingston had received a letter from the State Comptroller’s Office requesting that steps be taken to get the leakage under control.
Livingston Mayor Curtis Hayes said the new readers will get the city’s system up to speed with what many other utilities already have in place.
“As most utility districts have, we do have a water loss at a little bit higher percentage than we would like,” Hayes said. “So, the zone meters, the AMR with the leak detection should be able to help our water department zero in on exactly the area that the water leak is in, which should take our water leakage down.”
Davenport said the automatic readers will transmit data directly to the city’s system, removing the need for workers to go door-to-door and read meters manually. He said often, people find leaks by accident when water starts coming from the ground, but usually by that point, the leak has been going on for quite some time. He said the new meters could hear a leak immediately and report the location.
“We all know about how hard it is to get labor,” Davenport said. “It makes you more efficient, but it also takes the data and uploads it straight into the city’s billing software, so the opportunity for human error is fairly minimized.”
Davenport said the zone meters can be installed through a rural or urban system. He said the urban system includes a reader at every other house to listen for leaks and report them to the transponder. He said in areas like Monroe and Hilham, the houses are too far apart for that system.
“I just can’t hardly tell you how hard it is to find a water leak that doesn’t want to be found,” Davenport said.
He said the second phase of the project will be to finish the remaining meters that this phase does not address. He said the city received a $2.3 million grant from the State Revolving Fund for that phase.
