High-volume water users will have meters checked to ensure billing accuracy

As part of an effort to ensure the city is billing for all water being used, the Kingston Board of Water Commissioners has hired a firm to test the accuracy of the meters of the city’s largest water users.

Water Department Superintendent Judith Hansen said the testing will be conducted over the course of the next two weeks by a two-person team employed by M.E. Simpson, which is partnering with Johnson Controls, the firm hired by the water board to conduct the testing.

The testing will be done only on meters greater than 3 inches in diameter, which are located ex-

clusively in businesses, institutions such as schools and hospitals, and some large apartment complexes, Hansen said. No household meters will be tested.

Hansen said there are only about 50 large water meters in Kingston, accounting for less than 2 percent of the 7,900 meters in the city, but that those customers account for about 30 percent of the water usage in the city.

Because the meters are mechanical devices, as they age, some of the internal

components wear out and the meter slows down, not properly registering the amount of water flowing through it, Hansen explained.

She said when that happens, the meters register less water than actually is used.

“We want to be sure we can account for every drop of water we use,” the superintendent said.

She said some of the meters that will be checked are more than 50 years old.

Hansen said the results of the testing will help the department structure a meter replacement plan.

She said each of the large water users has been

contacted and appointments have been scheduled for the testing to be conducted. She said there will be no “cold calls,” meaning no one will show up unexpectedly to conduct water tests.

M.E. Simpson employees will carry identification and will arrive in a marked vehicle, she said.

The testing of each meter should take about 30 minutes, during which time water service will, in most cases, be disrupted, Hansen said. She said the crew will be at each site for about 90 minutes.

Hansen said five or six meters will be tested each day.