One of the new Metron water meters placed on a desk. The meters use cellular data to be remotely read and track water usage in real time.
By: Dean Vaglia | Mount Clemens-Clinton-Harrison Journal | Published December 5, 2024
MOUNT CLEMENS — The future of water service in Mount Clemens is here today.
Mount Clemens has begun the process of replacing all of its water meters with Metron cellular-equipped meters, which are more accurate than the city’s current meters and will allow both the city and residents to keep track of their water usage easier.
“One of the bigger hassles with our current meters is reading them,” Mount Clemens Utilities Director Lenny Bertrand said. “Currently, we have a guy who gets in the meter truck every few days a month and he has to drive around though the whole city really, really slow so that he can pick up the signal from all of these other meters. It usually takes about four days to read the whole city. Now we’ll be able to do it by pretty much hitting a button and you can pull up any read.”
The Metron Spectrum and Enduro meters are equipped with cellular data registers that connect them to the Verizon cellular network, allowing the meters to “call” Metron on a daily basis. The city is then able to contact Metron to get the data, while residents are able to read their meter data in real time through the WaterScope app and waterscope.us website.
“(WaterScope) is great for budgeting, but it’s also great if you should have a water leak,” Mount Clemens City Manager Gregg Shipman said. “You would know right away if you had a leak, and you could get that fixed so you don’t end up with a high bill. A lot of times, somebody doesn’t even realize they have a leak until they get their water bill and they notice it’s substantially higher than normal.”
Around 6,000 meters are being installed, in essence finishing up a modernization process that began around 2021.
“We started out a couple years ago installing these as needed to replace failed meters, (outfitting) new construction, things like that because we wanted to test them and make sure they were everything that they were billed to be,” Shipman said. “We checked with other communities that used them. Everybody that used them had a great report. We’ve had good luck with them in the past two years, so that’s when we decided that this is the style we’re going to go with.”
As of July 2024, there were 1,500 new meters in Mount Clemens, and the city commission voted to purchase enough meters to finish the job on July 15. Along with the $2.33 million in meters, the city paired a $582,700 installation job to be performed by contractor Professional Meters Inc. Letters are being sent out to residents to schedule their meter replacement date, which is a job expected to take around 20-30 minutes to complete. Residents will be informed and instructed to register through three color-coded notices; a green notice will serve as the initial notice, a yellow notice as the secondary notice and a red notice as the final notice. Water will be shut off if all three notices go unanswered. Bertrand expects 90% of the meters to be installed by May 2025.
The battery powering the data registers is expected to last for 10 years. A new head with a full battery can be installed when the battery dies. For more information about the meters and installation process, call the Mount Clemens Utilities Department at (586) 469-6889, ext. 502.