Dear City Utilities Customer,
City Utilities of Richland Center – Water Department will be upgrading water meters throughout the city starting the first week of April as part of our Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) program. The new metering system will be read remotely from the Utility Office compared to the current drive by reading system. This will allow our utility to continue providing superior customer service while operating more efficiently and effectively. Some benefits of AMI meters include more frequent meter use data collection to detect customer leaks sooner than a monthly reading thus conserving water, meter monitoring to sooner detect non-working meters to reduce unaccounted for water use and enhanced regular meter reading efficiency with streamlined billing.
Since the water meter is located inside of your property so it does not freeze in winter, we will need to set up an appointment for Utility Staff to access the meter. We anticipate that the entire meter replacement process will take less than ½ hour as the new meters need to be programmed to each site that they are installed. Your water service will be unavailable for approximately 15 minutes during the process. Please make sure the area around your water meter is accessible once an appointment is scheduled. During the visit to complete the meter exchange, we will also be completing a DNR mandated Residential or Commercial Cross Connection Inspection.
Appointment times are available between 7:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Utility Staff will attempt to make phone contact to set up appointments for residential customers. We may also knock on doors and request access if we have free time between scheduled appointments. Please note that due to the nature of how AMI meters send their data to the Utility Office, there are some areas of town that are “blacked out” on the water meter installations until the electric meters are installed.
Once we have a system down for programming and installing the new meters, the time needed to perform the change should be less than the ½ hour. Once staff are proficient with the new meters, we intend to roll out an online scheduling portal to allow you to schedule your own appointment. We will continue to provide updates to the AMI meter program on the Utility website cityutilitiesofrc.com via our face book page facebook.com/CityUtilitiesRichlandCenter/ and through messages on your monthly bill.
To ensure your safety, Utility staff will only arrive in a vehicle with a City Utilities logo as seen on the top of this notice, will wear Utility logoed apparel, and carry a Utility issued photo identification badge.
If you have questions about the AMI water meter change, or if you wish to make an appointment starting the second week in April after our initial training and roll out of installations with the new meters, you can reach us by contacting the Water Shop at 608-647-4226. Thank you in advance for your response to our request for access to your water meter. City Utilities looks forward to continuing to provide you with safe, reliable and affordable Utility services in the future.
Sincerely,
Steve Krueger – Water Superintendent – City Utilities of RC