The Henderson Water Utility has created a new position that in part will assist in ensuring new water meters are working properly.
The Automated Meter Infrastructure Technician will be an employee out in the field who troubleshoots meter problems, locates best spots for transfer towers and looks into why software may not be working, said HWU Director of Operations Kevin Roberts.
Roberts said that a meter reading controversy late last year and early this year was not the reason for implementing the position because HWU was going to need an employee whose primary focus was on the new meters that are a part of a new system HWU is installing for all customers. But Roberts did say the controversy may have sped things up in implementing the new position.
Early this year, HWU instituted catch-up bills after the utility learned that it had been undercharging some customers for months after newly installed smart water meters that hadn’t been programmed were incorrectly transmitting water usage to the HWU system and the billing department. A 3,000-gallon water usage, for example, was showing at the billing department as 300 gallons, effectively creating a bill that was 10% of what it should have been.
The default payment on those catch-up bills was broken into 12 months.
Roberts said that HWU has about 500 new smart meters left to install. But there’s still a way to go before the advanced metering infrastructure is completely in place.
Additionally, Roberts said HWU has delegated responsibility to an employee to ensure that the city of Henderson’s billing department—which handles HWU bills—and HWU are seeing the same data. That employee’s responsibility is to look at any meter that had a leak to it, determine if someone has been double billed or not billed enough, and to make sure what HWU is showing with meters and what the city is billing is square, he said.
Because the AMI tech position required an HWU budget amendment, the Henderson City Commission, which approves HWU’s annual budget, has to approve the amendment. The commission gave a preliminary approval Tuesday after the amendment’s first read.
