Automated Water Meters In Use

Automated water meter reading has now come to the City of Puxico. In the past weeks, you may have noticed workers looking at your water meter and you may have found that your water was turned off for about fifteen or twenty minutes. These workers were placing a transmitting device to be used by a cellular network system on the meter so that it could transmit meter reading to a network site.

This system automatically transmits a meter reading every 15 minutes to the network site. The computer at City Hall will be able to download these reading from the network site on a daily basis. Once a month, the collector will have the current downloaded reading sent to the computer’s billing program and the billing program will use that reading to determine the number of gallons of water used and bill accordingly. The City maintenance workers will no longer be going from meter to meter on a monthly basis to obtain a reading for billing purposes.

One of the benefits of automatic water meter readings is that the program will notify the collector on a daily basis if a resident is using more water than normal which could be a sign of a water leak. The collector will be able to call the resident and inform him of the problem on that day rather than the resident having to wait until the end of the month when the actual bill comes out.

The bill that will be coming out February 1 will be based on the meter reading on the old meter for what was used up to the point when the device was installed plus the reading sent by the new automated reader at the end of the month for water used since the device was installed. From that point forward, bills will be based on the readings sent by the automated readers. If you have questions, please feel free to call Puxico City Hall, 573-222-3162.