$11M to change digital water meters in Madison County

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) - It’s out with the old and in with the new.

33,000 homeowners who receive their water from the Madison County Water Department will get ill be getting a digital upgrade.

The meters tracking how much water each house is using, are going to be switched out.

It will cost $11 million dollars to make the switch.

The goal is to make it more cost efficient and to determine precisely, how much water everyone is using.

Although the meters are high-tech, your bill won’t be high.

Water prices are not going up, money will actually be saved.

“These new meters are RF so we’ll have radio towers through out the county that can read the meters without someone actually going out and popping the lid and writing down what the meter reading is,” said Madison County Commissioner Phil Riddick.

The meter reading is currently being done by employees at Huntsville Utilities, they get paid $1 for each meter read, every month.

The new meters can monitor your water usage from a computer, and no one will lose their job.

“If an unusual amount of water starts being used, it will be detected quickly, so we can notify the customer. You used this much last month, you used this much now. You might need to check and see if you have a leak,” said Riddick.

Another reason for the $11 million dollar switch, the old water meters like this one, don’t do the best job of actually measuring how much water you use.

“We see about a 35 percent water loss right now. That’s a pretty big number. All water departments are going to have some loss, but we need to get the number down,” said Riddick.

The process should take about 2 more years to switch out all of the water meters in Madison County.

Copyright 2021 WAFF. All rights reserved.