Glendale wants to help you save water with new system

To improve the way water use is measured and streamline customers’ billing experience, Glendale is moving forward with a roughly $33.4 million project to overhaul the city’s aging water metering system.

Councilmembers this month gave city staff the go-ahead to solicit contractors for an advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI, which will replace Glendale’s 65,000 water meters and uses industry-standard technology to track utility usage and leaks more accurately.

For customers, that means they are able to closely monitor their water use and see if their house or business is experiencing a leak, said Michael Rotunno, vice president of Arcadis, the consulting firm working with the city on the project.

“The software can detect when there’s a leak on their property and they can be notified through the (online) portal or by other means so the leak can be addressed more quickly to reduce the amount of money that’s wasted,” he said of the advanced metering technology.

Such infrastructure relies on upgraded water meters and sensors, data collection and management, and a twoway communication system to remotely collect water use information from the meters.

“Our current meters don’t register 100% of the water being used,” Ron Serio, the director of Glendale’s Water Services Department, explained to the council on Feb. 13. With an AMI system, “we expect to see a little bit of an increase from the amount of water being metered.”

Currently, city staffers drive around Glendale to manually take readings from most of the commercial and residential meters monthly. Some meters, though, are fitted with a radio transmitter — like the technology an AMI system uses — allowing staff to drive by in a vehicle that has a data collection device mounted to it.

Serio said the bills the city sends out to customers don’t accurately reflect the amount of water that’s actually being used, meaning it’s losing out on revenue. The new technology, he said, will allow the city to collect more revenue because of the accurate readings.

“That’s the biggest piece of this financial component that helps us pay for this project,” Serio added.

Where is funding coming from?

To fund the project, the city intends to issue an approximately $28 million bond. An additional source of funding could come from a $5 million grant the city will go after from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Part of the council’s approval this month was allowing the city to pursue that WaterSMART Water and Energy Efficiency grant.

For the financing route, the city is looking to use the first three years of the bond’s life to make interest-only payments, Assistant City Manager Vicki Rios explained to the council. The actual debt, she said, is estimated to be roughly the same as the amount of revenue the city expects to collect after implementing the upgraded system.

A cost-benefit evaluation the city presented to the council shows that over 15 years, the new metering system could net the city nearly $44 million, or roughly $3 million a year.

“It’s sort of one of those projects that pays for itself,” she said echoing Serio, before emphasizing that the revenue is not guaranteed because it “can fluctuate up and down depending on water usage.”

“It’s not without any risk … but we think that even if it didn’t pay for itself, the other benefits, in terms of the data that we receive and the convenience for our customers and the operational savings, make it worthwhile to do the project,” Rios added.

During the council’s workshop meeting, Councilmember Joyce Clark raised the question of whether customers will see their water rates increase to pay for the upgrades.

Rios said the city will see additional revenue because it will be able to bill for the water that the current meters are not tracking. Separately though, she acknowledged, city staff has previously spoken to the council about potentially revisiting water rates later.

“There will be rate increases probably over time. We don’t want to wait 10 years over time and never raise rates,” Rios said, adding, “but they won’t be driven by this, because this system will capture more water going through the meter.”

Saving on meter-related costs

Part of the anticipated savings from switching to the AMI system is likely to come from the reduction in vehicle and labor costs associated with reading meters manually. According to the cost-benefit evaluation, the city is looking to save just north of $6.1 million over 15 years.

“We expect to see a reduction in costs by less vehicle miles driven to go out and read meters. We expect to reduce staffing because we won’t have as much of a manual effort to go out and read meters,” Serio said. “So, there will be financial benefits moving forward.”

If manual meter readers will no longer be needed, Councilmember Lauren Tolmachoff wanted to know what happens to those jobs.

According to Serio, the city has 21 employees who collect the meter data. They are also responsible for turning on and off water whenever people move in or out of homes. While he expects the city will only need about 16 people to be out in the field, those five positions would be reassigned.

“We wouldn’t just go and cut staff,” he said. “Our plan would be that we reduce staff by attrition.”

The automated system the AMI would provide, he later added, would still require staff who can fix problems when they arise, such as communication errors or failing meters.