During a special meeting held September 9, the Levelland City Council held a work workshop that consisted of a presentation from Ameresco concerning the city’s automatic water metering infrastructure.
Ameresco’s Chad Nobles, began the meeting by explaining to council the entire process in hopes of increasing operational efficiency throughout the city and reducing some of the cost as it relates to water.
Nobles stated some of the meters in the system are past their useful life. A lot of meters that are being used currently are mechanical meters that have a device that spins inside of them. As those components age, they begin to typically slow down.
That means the city does not collect the revenue it’s actually measuring. When the water is not measured through that meter, the city is losing money associated with that.
Additionally, there’s a mandate out by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) that says the city has to record and identify the pipe type or material on the city and citizen side of the water meter. The mandate is called a Lead and Copper Survey. The mandate can only be adressed by going out, identifying and surveying every single meter.
Nobles explained that while some meters were not only past their useful life, the discovery that the technology within was failing resulted in finding a way to resolve that issue. As a result, that is where Ameresco came on board.
The process began with the city hiring the business through a cooperative purchasing agreement. Ameresco was qualified through a competitive bid process and was awarded the project. The city then leveraged that procurement process and entered into a product development agreement in February.
Since February, Ameresco has been doing meter testing, surveying meter boxes and examining all of the large meters.
From there, a scope of work was put together that consisted of material and looked at different technologies. Once that was put together, Ameresco talked to city staff about those technologies and conducted an evaluation of that process.
The scope includes a meter count of 6,349. Of that total, 5,282 have a meter size of 5/8 and ¾ inches, 794 meters are one inch, 82 are one-and-half inches, 172 are two inches, seven are three inches, seven are four inches and five are six inches.
The additional scope items included the integration of all data points, pictures of each meter install (before and after), sub-meter accuracy GPS coordinates, Lead and Copper Survey, ancillary materials, replacement boxes (if necessary), composite lids and the addition of a customer portal.
During the workshop, Nobles explained the presentation would include some of those results in addition to what kind of project would resolve and fix some of the challenges. At that point, the council would have a decision on whether to move forward with implementation sometime in the future or the city would pay Ameresco the cost of that project development agreement.
A required step in the process has been completed before the meeting which was a third-party engineering review.
This meant somebody that is not associated with the city or not associated with Ameresco looked at calculations and the big picture of what the project entailed.
Moving forward, the company tested roughly 65 to 68 meters that we’re out in the field. The crews pulled the meter out of the ground and sent it to a thirdparty testing lab to be put through its paces. Additionally, the crew went and randomly surveyed approximately another 100-plus water meters around town.
“We wanted to really get the feel of what’s in the ground and what the meter box conditions are,” said Nobles. “We looked at all 3-inch and larger meters. We physically put eyes on every single one of those because we want to look at the condition, we want to know where those big meters are as they cost a lot of money. We want to make sure our scope of work is 100% accurate.”
When surveying the boxes, it was found on the residential side and in some of the small meter boxes there are deep intersects because of the freeze line.
Those type of things were found in addition to a lot of the boxes being somewhat damaged or in varying conditions. Also, a lot of the boxes surveyed were full of dirt to varying degrees and various types of lids were found to be used ranging from metal, composite or polymer type materials and even fiberglass.
“Those are just kind of some of what we consider residential meter conditions and that would be typically one inch and below on these meter sizes,” explained Nobles.
For intermediate size meters, they range from inch and half to two inches.
Typically, those intermediate meters showed very similar conditions where some of the meters had foggy glass or some of them were broken.
When it came to the large meters, each one was individually surveyed and the results varied. Some were found to not have bypass valves.
An example provided to the group was if a hospital had a situation where a meter was needing to be worked on, the bypass valve would still allow flow around the meter. Typically, it is in those critical type of applications where flow is continuously needed.
In regard to the test results, the meters that were pulled out of the ground, tested and were physically looked at and compared in a third-party testing atmosphere. It was also mentioned that the meters were tested according to the American Water Works Association (AWWA) standards.
Nobles explained the AWWA standards consist of testing for low flow, medium flow and a high flow which is done to get a range.
With that standard in place, an average household should consist of about 15% of the water going to the low flow, about 70% should go through the medium flow and 15% should go through the high flow.
“What has changed since that standard was put in place is that we all now have low flow toilets and faucets,” said Nobles, “we typically see those through the low flow.”
Councilman Bill Powell questioned how much water is categorized as “low flow” with the response being around .25 GPM (Gallons Per Minute).
“Anytime you would get a leak such as drippy faucet or dripping toilet that’s probably all going to be on the low flow side,” said Nobles. “When you turn your shower or your sink on you are going to get into that medium flow range. If you have an irrigation system running outside or if you are outside running a water hose or washing cars you are going to be in the high flow range.”
When the residential meters were looked at, the results show the low flow side tested at 80% accurate.
“That means that 20% of the volume of water that was going through a low flow side and if you had a leak, it’s not recording 20% of the time that one is going through,” explained Nobles. “When we average it across all three flows, we end up with basically an 85.4.”
Nobles also added that there were three accounts where the testing party removed two meters from the sample. This was due to having several meters that read zero in all three categories.
“When we do that, we double check the calculations. We go back and actually look at the past historical data,” said Nobles. “What we found was that they had some consumption. We assume that at some point they potentially could have failed either in transit or there was something wrong where they were not able to get a read. We basically toss those out of the consumption data and the technical data and we evaluated the remaining meters and that’s where these averages came from.”
Nobles added there were 10 meters that actually tested zero in all three categories, calling it “scary” meaning those meters weren’t reading as they were still not showing consumption in the database.
“So, who knows how long that was taking place,” said Nobles.
Mayor Breann Buxkemper asked Nobles if those meters were even producing a bill. He explained that the meter would only be producing a base bill.
“Typically what happens is staff will usually catch those over a recorded time…if they see something that’s historically billing at zero every month though there is consumption, that is when staff will typically flag that and go ahead and have somebody go take a look at that meter,” explained Nobles. “However, we do not know and it’s hard for us to project how long that goes throughout the process.”
With all those results presented, Nobles explained that it is costing the city money to produce and give water to the citizens, but the city is not necessarily collecting.
“When we don’t balance our budget and we cannot cover our costs, we typically try to raise our rates,” said Nobles. “If I have a meter that’s 100% accurate and your meter is reading 80% and I am paying extra for your share.”
Nobles added that the idea of replacing meters and getting them all back to where they need to be in accuracy allows everybody to pay their fair share.
“What happens is you would raise rates and now I’m paying more because my meter is accurate and I’m really covering your loss of your meter values,” said explained Nobles. “So, the idea when you do a meter replacement project, only pay for what you use, no more or no less is the concept.”
Part of the turn-key project, a construction manager would on site full-time for the length of the project time. The company will be responsible for all the data integration with the new software and with the new meters.
The new meters will come with a radios that sends signals to the cloud service then to city hall every day. With the idea of going to a fixed-base system, city staff will physically read the meters if there are issues or if water needs to be shut off. Those meter numbers will come in daily multiple times a day for regular operations.
From an operational efficiency perspective, the project would reduce meter reading costs, reduce maintenance costs and quicken the response to citizen inquiries.
A perk for citizens is that they will be able to monitor their water usage through the customer portal. Additional highlights for the average citizen is more transparency with the aid of the portal along with fair and accurate billing.
The new lids will be made out of composite materials which are rated for various weather conditions along with withstanding direct sunlight. Additionally, the lids will be rated to withstand heavy weight if a vehicle were to drive over the lid.
Since photos will be taken before and after, Nobles explained that the crews will work to have the box and lid in the same manner before it was replaced. If the box cannot be placed flush it will be due to adjustments needing to be made so everything can properly function.
The main reason for the use of composite materials is that the signal being transmitted out of the box will be a lot easier to read compared to a metal lid.
If the project was to move forward, there has been an estimated percentage cost made by the company to account for various items that may break in either the replacement process or pipe survey.
Other equipment that will be needed will include black boxes that serve as repeaters that will be placed on vertical infrastructure to collect the signals from the meters which will then be sent to the cloud.
Questions about warranty were raised by Councilman Michael Stueart. Nobles stated the meters have a 20-year warranty with 10-years full and 10-years prorated.
“There are systems out there that I know are over 20 years that are still working today,” said Nobles. “They’re not plastic. They’re considered composite so they are made to be in the weather and they made to be underwater. They’re all epoxied and potted because they’re typically in a harsh environment at all times.”
City crews will be welcomed to assist meter crews to understand how they are replaced to address need in the future. In terms of city staff in City Hall, software upgrades will be done first before meters begin to be replaced. That will assist with troubleshooting and allow city staff to learn what new features there are and how to address any issues that arise.
In terms of Nobles and his crews, there is a one-year warranty. For parts and supplies, the city will rely on a local distributer and will not have to rely on Nobles and his crews to address quick fixes.
With local Government Code 302, Nobles and his team have to guarantee meter accuracy and that guarantee is over the term of the project. To prove that guarantee, they will return to the area and test the meters.
Currently, legislation says the meters must be tested at least one time in the first five years.
“We guarantee your accuracy, that translates into revenue then into dollars because we said we tested the meters at 80%,” said Nobles. “We’re going to guarantee that the meters to be 98.5% accuracy over the term of the project. Then we will come back in year three and test those meters. If they don’t test at 98.5%, I have to start replacing meters or write you a check for that revenue projection.”
As a turn-key project, the projected price that was given to council was roughly $5.6 million.
A projected timeline would have the council approving the project some time in October (assuming its approval).
From there, the construction would be expected to begin in January 2025. After receiving product and materials, construction would take approximately 6-8 months.