New water meters being installed in Colfax
By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — Although it’s been a long time coming, installation of the new water meters has now started in Colfax.
The first two weeks of meter change-out notices to set up appointments have gone out for April 10, 11, 12, 17, 18 and 19, reported Lynn Niggemann, village administrator-clerk-treasurer, at the Colfax Village Board’s April 9 meeting.
The first meters that will be changed to the new models will be in middle of town, from county Highway M to the west side of state Highway 40 and from Highway 40 on the north side of town south to Railroad Avenue.
The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin issued a final decision granting approval for the Village of Colfax to replace water meters August 30, 2017, at an estimated cost of $103,000.
Based on a recommendation from the public works committee, the Colfax Village Board approved buying new residential water meters earlier in the year at the January 9, 2017, meeting.
The new water meters will be read with computer software and a tablet computer and will allow public works employees to drive up and down the streets to read the meters rather than having to enter each house to read the meter and record the numbers.
The response to the notices about appointments for changing the meters has been good, Niggemann told the village board at the April 9 meeting.
The new meters measure by the gallon while the old meters measure by the one hundred gallons, said Gary Stene, village president.
With the old water meters, village residents could have had a leak of some kind but it would not be detected until the end of the quarter, Niggemann said.
The new system will sound an alert right away if there is a water leak, she said.
Detecting a leak in a toilet right away, for example, will be much more beneficial to village residents than after three months of a leaking toilet before it registers on the water bill, Niggemann said.
In addition, when the April water bills were sent out, the envelopes included a form for village residents to pay their water bill with an electronic funds transfer from their checking account for the next billing cycle, she said.
The current system of reading water meters and calculating the bills is all done manually. The new system will be much more efficient, Stene said.
According to the PSC, based on annual report data from 2012 to 2016, the Colfax water utility has had losses of 28,000 gallons to 32,000 gallons of water per customer each year (non-revenue water).
The value of the water lost is estimated at between $36,000 and $92,000 each year, the PSC says.
The Colfax water utility has three wells, one water tower, and 10 miles of water main.
The PSC decision to allow the new water meters to be installed states, “it is estimated that the Utility’s high non-revenue water has had the effect of reducing income from water sales by more than 30 percent for each of the last five years.”
Based on revenue in 2016 of $261,274, if one-third of the revenue was lost, that amounts to a $78,000 loss in revenue for one year.
Other business
In other business at the April 9 meeting, the Colfax Village Board approved a request from Jesse Perry, 1014 High Street, asking permission for his daughter to raise a pair of ducks as a 4-H project. According to the letter, the 4-H project will be Silver Appleyards, a breed of duck that cannot fly and is known to be reasonably quiet.