Water meter leaks still being addressed

As frustrating as it’s been, there may be light at the end of the leaking water meter tunnel. That was the message Great Bend Public Works Director Jason Cauley gave to the City Council as it met Monday night regarding the leaks caused by the new automated water meter system installation.

“We started off with 156 leaks associated with the AMI project. We have got that dwindled down to 36,” Cauley said.

This is a $2.4 million project that started this spring to replace all of the roughly 6,600 water meters on the city-owned water utility with a new automated meter reading system. Zenner USA of Banning, Calif., is the general contractor and Municipal Install of St. Louis, Mo., is the subcontractor putting the meters in place.

After the installation, the leaks started.

“Now, that being said, we’re only able to do about between five and seven a week,” Cauley said. That is because they have to call and the locations for the other utilities that may be nearby before they dig.

As they are finishing a week’s worth of repairs, they call for the locates for the next week, he said. “So, it’s still going to be a few more weeks, probably roughly around that six weeks out, to get all those taken care of, but we are making progress” and they have a plan in place.

The property owners don’t get billed for the water usage caused by the leaks, said City Clerk Shawna Schafer.

“And if you notice that you have a leak, please call the Water Utility Office and make sure it’s not registering on the meter,” she said. That way, they can make take care of any billing issues.

What is the problem?

Cauley was asked what was causing the leaks.

“It’s multiple things. The biggest problem we’re running into right now is what we consider a meter bend,” he said.

Meter bends are basically a hook on the pipe that the meter sits on and attaches to, he said. There are gaskets that seal these and sometimes they can start to seep, allowing the face on the meter bend to erode.

There are many reasons for this – how the gaskets were installed in the first place or the age of the equipment, he said.

“We had a simple fix,” he said. There is a repair kit that they can just fix that meter bend.

But, “we are out of those parts and those parts are 36 weeks out so now we are replacing the whole setter. That’s why it’s taking so long.”

They have to dig up the meter pit and install this setter. This entails the excavation, taking the meter off-line, removing the meter, and putting in new inflow and outflow pipes, which is much more time-consuming.

On Wednesdays, the city calls utility companies to get the “dig safe” green light for five more locations for the next week. The work is done over three days: On day one, they excavate; day two, they place the setter; and on day three, they backfill the holes, which are several feet wide and several feet deep.

“So, the company that was doing the project, is there any way for them to have noticed any of that when they were going through and installing?” said Ward 2 Councilwoman Jolene Biggs.

“No,” he said, speaking from my experience as a serviceman in the Water Department. A lot of times, a meter is changed out and it may be a week or two later that at leak is discovered because a gasket “may have gotten tweaked just a little bit or something of that nature.”

Ward 1 Councilman Alan Moeder asked if the company doing the installation was finished.

“They are getting close to being done,” Cauley said. “They have just a handful of large meters still to put in yet.”

There are also some problems on the billing side, he said. “We did give them another month because they found out they had some radio frequency issues.”

There is something, especially around the Coolidge Street area that’s interfering with the transmissions. The new system transmits water-use data from the meter to the Water Office for billing purposes.

The company’s engineers are here to investigate. They replaced some chips and are putting up some more infrastructure at their expense to remedy that situation.

Meanwhile, the meters that have been online are being used, Schafer said.

Why replace the meters?

The city applied for and received a loan through the Kansas Public Water Supply Loan Fund to cover the expense.

This is seen as a way to improve accuracy in tracking consumer water use and save the city money. By alleviating the city’s long-running water meter reading woes, it is expected to pay for itself in five to 10 years.

Anyone with further concerns or issues, can contact Utilities at 620-793-4170 or the Front Door Building at 620-793-4100.

Those with questions can also contact Cauley at 620-793-4150 or [email protected].