Pittsburgh upgrades to automated water meters

Yahoo

14-03-2025

PITTSBURG, Kan. — The City of Pittsburg is in the process of transitioning to automated water meters.
The city's current equipment used to perform water readings is in need of repairs and is out of date.
Usually, city vehicles use radio read meters, which read the meters by driving through neighborhoods to get polls of readings.
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The problem is the equipment for the radio meter reading is outdated, which leads to some of the meters not being read. When that happens, the city has had to estimate what the meters are, based on their historical usage in the past months to a year.
Once the switch is made, readings will be taken from the meters and then sent directly back to a central location where all of them can be read.
Deputy City Manager Jay Byers says this will allow them to save time and money.
'It's a much better way of doing it. If we can do it, we do it automatically. But we have over 8,000 customers, over 8,000 meters. So it's and it's very there's this kind of an expensive thing to do to change over all the meters, and it's time consuming and it's disruptive. So we're just doing it a little bit at a time,' said Byers.
Meaning city workers will continue to physically read meters. The change, by the way, won't impact water bills.
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