Water Meter Readers Tap Into Laptop Technology

As Oxnard water worker Ruben Martinez pulls his pickup truck into the Seabreeze neighborhood of northeast Oxnard, the screen lights up on the laptop computer sitting next to him.

“712 Calle Vista Verde. 704 Calle Vista Verde. 1127 Paseo Las Nubes. 880 Calle Cielito. 1026 Calle Vista Calma.”

Addresses and numbers flood the screen.

In minutes, Martinez knows how much water has been consumed this month in each of 392 houses in Seabreeze.

With the city Water Division’s newly acquired technology, workers can take drive-by readings of residential water meters without leaving their trucks.

The city likes the equipment so much it plans to use it in other neighborhoods by next year.

As more area is covered by the new meters, no longer will a water meter reader have to lift a metal and cement panel weighing up to 55 pounds to look at the dial.

No more will a worker have to be careful of the black widow spiders and snakes that might be nestled around the meter.

And future meter readers won’t wear out a pair of steel-toed shoes every six months walking five to seven miles a day.

In fact, the new system at Seabreeze has reduced the time it takes to getreadings from seven hours to about 15 minutes.

“This is a technological solution whose time has finally come,” said water Supt. Ken Ortega.

The automatic meter reading system works when an antenna on the Water Division truck sends a wake-up call to transceivers attached to a meter. The retrofitted meters send a signal containing water usage data back to the Pentium III laptop on the front seat.

The data are kept on the computer’s hard drive to be downloaded and used to generate bills.

The first such bill was sent out in April in Seabreeze after being compared with readings collected the old way. Except for a few cases when no numbers registered, the technology gave perfect readings, workers said.

That contrasts with past errors caused by scratched, fogged-up or otherwise difficult-to-read meters, or workers’ erroneous estimates.

Seabreeze residents said they haven’t noticed any change in their water bills. “I didn’t know there was anything different,” said Darin Biamonte, a police officer who lives in the neighborhood.

The Oxnard City Council on Tuesday approved the refinancing and reissue of city bonds to allocate $500,000 to expand the program and retrofit 3,000 additional water meters next year, at a cost of about $150 per meter.

Ortega envisions replacing all of Oxnard’s 33,000 meters with the new technology in the next 10 years.

Ventura County, the only other water provider to use the equipment locally, plans expansion from its current limited use in Lake Sherwood and Bell Canyon, areas with big lots or hilly terrain.

Cities such as Corona, Carlsbad, Glendora and Beverly Hills also are using the devices.

Across the country, about 4,000 utilities use some form of automatic meter reading by Invensys, the company that made the Oxnard devices, said Terry Heffernan, the company’s regional representative.

The cost savings of the technology assumes that workers will be spending less time reading meters.

Across the country, the number of municipal gas, electric and water meter readers has gone from 19,310 in 1991 to 18,070 in 1999, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“There are no envisioned layoffs” in Oxnard, said Ortega, who says he will use a staff of seven meter readers and five meter repair workers to better maintain water mains, replace old meters and distribute notices to customers in arrears.

Ortega said Oxnard provides water to 300 to 500 new homes each year, but the city has not increased the number of meter readers in at least a decade.

Still, meter readers say some workers feel threatened.

“I just hope they don’t replace us altogether,” said Ben Clorina, a water meter reader of 12 years.

Clorina said he has already seen meter readers adopt lighter and quicker tools. Decades ago, workers entered readings in black books, with each page dedicated to an individual house.

Then they switched to entering new readings on a computer printout carried on a clipboard. Most recently, hand-held computers allowed workers to input readings.

But the newest technology turns the physical, outdoor work into a kind of mobile desk job.

“It beats walking,” Clorina said.