Merced to buy water meters for homes without one

During a special meeting Wednesday, Merced City Council voted unanimously to purchase water meters for about 10,800 homes, or roughly half of the city, to try to reduce water waste.

The council unanimously approved the emergency purchase with a 6-0 vote. Councilman Noah Lor was absent.

Merced is facing a state mandate to cut water use by 36 percent, compared with the city’s use in 2013. Water officials have long said meters can make the largest impact on water wasters, said Mike Wegley, director of water resources for Merced.

“(Council’s decision) shows the urgency that we need to start saving water now,” he said. “We can’t wait any longer.”

The cost to buy and install all those meters is an estimated $3.2 million from the city’s water funds, he said, which are made up of fees homeowners pay when they first move in and other revenues.

Wegley said the money for the meters comes from a fund for water-related upgrades only. The installation of water meters should also reduce the city’s need to dig new wells, he said.

Water use is measured in hundred cubic feet. Metered homes get 30 hundred cubic feet, or about 22,400 gallons, per month, and are charged an additional 87 cents for every hundred cubic feet over that allotment.

The city hopes to begin installations of the new meters in June, Wegley said, and will need to hire a contractor to tackle such a large job. The entire process will take six months to a year.

City Manager John Bramble said declaring the purchase of meters an “emergency” allows the city to get the process moving at least 30 days sooner than if the decision was made through the regular process.

About half of the city is metered, including homes built after 1992. Merced pumps about 24 million gallons of water a day.

Leah Brown, the city’s water conservation specialist, has said businesses, schools, parks and churches in town have meters. Only homes are without meters.

The meter can recognize very small flows, so it can measure the water dripping from a leaky faucet. The meters report water use to a cloud-based computer system, so use can be tracked online.

Merced Councilman Mike Murphy noted that water meters are required on all homes by 2025 anyway.

Even if the city enacted all of its educational efforts on conserving water and began rebate programs to encourage residents to install more efficient water fixtures, at best it would save 10 percent more water, according to city staff.

If the homes already metered in Merced are any indication, putting meters on the rest of the homes could reduce use by 28 percent. “This was the right choice to make,” Murphy said about buying the meters.

Gov. Jerry Brown said this month that he would push for legislation authorizing fines of up to $10,000 a day for extreme water wasters.

The State Water Resources Control Board said this month that Merced reported a 15 percent decrease in water use in March compared with the same month in 2013. Merced, as well as Atwater, Modesto, Oakdale and Ripon, face the strictest cutbacks with a potential 36 percent mandate.

Riverbank, Turlock and Livingston face 32 percent reductions and Ceres is looking at a 28 percent cut.

This story was originally published May 14, 2015 at 11:07 AM with the headline "Merced to buy water meters for homes without one."