Faulty water meters causing inaccurate billing, city plans replacement program

CHEBOYGAN — A majority of the water meters on homes throughout the City of Cheboygan are faulty and need to be replaced. The problems have caused city residents to be inaccurately billed for their water.

Cheboygan city officials are planning on implementing a mandatory water meter replacement program to resolve the issues with the aging devices, as well as make things easier on city staff.

"As we look to raise our water and sewer rates, we're also looking at meters," said Cheboygan City Manager Dan Sabolsky. "We do have some money in the water accounts."

Sabolsky said after the meters are replaced, and before the city moves to increase water and sewer rates, they could improve collections for the utility service by between 30 and 40 percent.

"Because we have a lot of old, outdated meters," he said. "We also want to be able to get those so that they can be read remotely where some of them cannot be done right now. So that's another project we're working on right now."

As meters on water lines running to homes start to age, they may not monitor water usage accurately. This has led to residents not being billed correctly.

City officials said residents are being billed less than they should be for the amount of water being used.

Sabolsky said a good rate of reading is around 95 percent, meaning for every 100 gallons of water being used, the meter will read 95 of those gallons. The current levels are lower than that. As the meters age, they read less and charge less.

A request will be made of the Cheboygan City Council to free up some funding from the water accounts, around $200,000, to start the water meter replacement program. These upgrades will be done on all of the water meters around the city that have not been recently changed out.

"The ones that are either broken, old, obsolete," said Sabolsky. "So that we can read them remotely."

Once the upgrades to the meters have been made, a city employee will be able to put a device in their vehicle and drive around the neighborhoods, sending a signal to the meters when they are in a certain range.

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The meters will then send the readings of the amount of water that has been used back to the person's device. This is similar to the new electricity meters some of the power companies have replaced on homes.

"It's not going to be an optional program to get meters upgraded," said Sabolsky.

Sabolsky said if people decide they do not want to get their meters upgraded for whatever reason, those people will be given a certain date by which the devices need to be changed out, or the resident will receive a fine. There are places in the city where the meters have been broken for a while, so the city has been estimating the water usage and billing that amount.

Officials said these new meters will remedy many of the issues the city has been having with its collections for the usage of water. The improved collections, as well as a proposed increase to the water and sewer rates, will also help to fund needed improvements to the water and sewer systems currently being made.

More: City council approves issuance of sewer bonds not to exceed $20 million

Contact Reporter Kortny Hahn at khahn1@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @khahnCDT.

This article originally appeared on Cheboygan Daily Tribune: Aging water meters lead to inaccurate billing for city residents