Water-Meter Data Ups Safety for Village Residents

The old man rarely washed his clothes. He wasn't bathing. In fact, he was having trouble getting through the day. Frail and solitary, he didn't get out much anymore, so no one noticed his growing troubles. Well, almost no one. Diane Pagano from the Village of Norridge Water Department took note of his low-water use despite the hundred-degree temperatures scorching this small Chicago suburb. "When we had all those hot days this past summer, I noticed people who weren't using much water," she says. "So, I went through the metering reports and did friendly courtesy calls to people I knew were elderly. If you start talking to people, they'll give you a lot of information."

When Pagano discovered that one gentleman she'd called was having trouble taking care of himself, she got his permission to call in social workers, who came to his aid. Such care and kindness are typical in Pagano's daily routine handling customer service for the 14,582 people served by the Norridge water utility. "We're very community minded," Pagano says about all workers in her village. This sentiment shows in the water utility's willingness to use meter data as an indicator of possible problems in residences and businesses.

Social Consciousness
Pagano spends part of her day making courtesy calls to customers. It all starts with the various reports that come off her utility's Hexagram STAR fixed-network automatic meter reading system. The system's radiofrequency technology transmits usage data from the town's 5,000 service connections every 12 hours. While many utility workers scrutinize high-consumption or continuous-usage reports to find customer leaks, Pagano pays special attention to the zero-consumption reports. After five years of working with this AMR system, she knows zero-consumption can mean trouble. She'll check into it if it lasts two weeks or more.

The first thing Pagano does when she sees zero-consumption is look at her own records. That's because the village invites residents to notify the water department of vacations, and Pagano makes notes of these in the comments section of her AMR system. Once Pagano knows she has no record of a vacationing resident on her list, she calls the local police. They might have been notified of a vacation, and they'll know if there has been a recent ambulance call, which could mean someone is now in the hospital. As a last resort, the police stop by the home to check on the resident. "We had a couple incidences where we noticed no water usage, and when the police went out to the home, they found the person deceased." On the flip side, the Norridge police know they can turn to Pagano when some Good Samaritan calls with concerns about a neighbor. She'll check to see if there has been zero consumption at the home. If so, police officers investigate.

Sometimes, however, water utility staff must do the investigating. Pagano recalls one time when the meter serving a small condominium complex simply stopped. It happened at the beginning of the billing cycle, and with a monthly reading schedule, the utility would have missed out on revenue for weeks. "We caught it in a couple of days," Pagano says. "If we hadn't, the utility would have lost more than $1,000 because we had no meter readings."

Leaky Business
Along with zero- and low-consumption reports, Pagano monitors the high-consumption alerts that come from her AMR system. So does John Rein, the Norridge Water Department's meter technician. "We figure an average home won't use more than around 300 gallons a day," he says. "If a customer goes over that, we'll watch consumption for a while." Pagano and Rein review their system's daily usage graphs, which give a diagrammatic view of consumption for the past two weeks. "If, for two weeks, a house used 250 gallons a day and then, all of a sudden, usage spikes to 3,000 gallons a day, you know that something's going on," Pagano says. She adds that sprinkler systems are easy to spot because the usage spike shows up every day or two on the graph. At businesses, Rein says, high-consumption reports have helped utility staff find some "huge" leaks. "Mainly, leaks are in washrooms," he says. "If those toilets leak, business owners generally have no idea, but a leaking toilet can lose 5,000 gallons of water a day." "That's a $20-a-day problem," Pagano notes.

With her trained eye, Pagano's even discovered a way people who aren't home can wind up with a whopper of a water bill. "We see people go on vacation, there's no consumption, and then, suddenly, there's a leak," she says. "We found out that when people use those chlorine tablets in the tank and the toilet isn't flushed regularly, the chlorine can eat up the rubber flapper." Pagano has seen it happen. She's also warned residents about it in the quarterly village newsletter. To help residents deal with leaks, Rein will go to the customer's home and locate the problem. If a plumber is needed, he'll recommend one. If a handyman can fix the trouble, Norridge has one available -- at no cost to residents.

Clearly, leak detection and prevention are high on Pagano's and Rein's lists of priorities. "Our residents are used to low water bills," Pagano says. "The only way to keep bills low is to catch leaks before they turn into something bigger." Rein adds another reason leak-detection is important: "Chicago bills us for every drop they send us. We have to pay them, then we have to collect from our customers." And, in a town where water has been scarce enough to require outdoor watering restrictions, preservation is important, too. "Conservation is becoming a major issue," Rein says. "We have to take care of our resources if we don't want to have water-supply problems in the future."

Betsy Loeff is News Writer for AMRA, the Automatic Meter Reading Association. This article used with permission of AMRA.