By Jack Chavez, Staff Writer

(April 6, 2023) In an effort to revise how the town records and bills water usage, Berlin homes should be equipped with smart water meters by the fall.

The Berlin Mayor and Town Council voted unanimously last week to proceed with requests for proposals (RFPs) for installing smart water meters that the town already possesses.

Bids will be due on May 4 with a 120-day contract beginning after a 30-day grace period, Director of Water Resources Jamey Latchum said during the March 27 meeting.

“They’re going to run into some stuff,” he said, explaining the need for a four-month window. “Part of the town is older infrastructure. There are going to be delays, and there are going to be asks for time extensions (since) we might not be able to get some of the water off. We’ll have to work on getting that done too.”

Latchum speculated that a bidding company may want to bring in two crews for the work, one for the “hard stuff” and one for the “easy stuff like the developments that are fairly new.”

Two or three competent workers could not out “50 to 100 in a day” in new developments like Decatur Farms, he said.

The town used $800,000 in ARPA funds last year to purchase the smart water meters, a decision made after a study by the Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project found that the town was losing upwards of $200,000 a year in water revenue due to the town’s outdated, inaccurate meters.

The new meters will bill residents by the gallon, as opposed to the status quo in which residents are billed by the thousand gallons.

Under that system, someone who uses 800 gallons and someone who uses 1,999 gallons is billed the same, because the latter did not cross the next thousand-gallon threshold, Latchum said.

“We feel it’s going to even out,” Latchum said. “It’s going to wash out some of the users who use more of the 1,900 gallons than the person who uses 800 gallons a month. We feel we need six months to a year under our belt and ask for another water rate structure.”

Councilman Dean Burrell points out that residents need to be notified well in advance, considering water will need to be shut off while installation is in progress.

Latchum said he’s worried mostly about the older parts of the town, which could take 30 or 45 minutes for an installation, or even upwards of two hours if there is any trouble.

“That’s my biggest thing, trying to make sure (we give residents adequate notice),” he said. “Notification is definitely (the top priority).”

Mayor Zack Tyndall said the town is following SERCAP’s guidance with the project and that the town is headed in the right direction. He suggested door hangers for notifications and echoed an earlier point by Latchum to urge residents to sign up for the town’s Code Red notification emergency notification system.

“We would try to isolate those areas of town (being serviced) the best we possibly can to be able to provide advanced warning to those homes,” Tyndall said. “But we’re also, as we’re pushing this messaging out, advising folks that they should be on the Code Red system with the Town of Berlin so we can push timely stuff and reminders out. But it’s really just making sure that they’re engaged with our constant contact, engaged with our Code Red and paying attention to our social media because that’s where our most timely information is going to be.”