Heritage Park homeowners to benefit from water-saving automated meters

Published by Communications at April 26, 2016

PALATKA, Fla., April 26, 2016 — About 700 homes in St. Augustine are receiving new automatic water metering technology allowing the city and homeowners to track their water conservation efforts through real-time data collection and identify leaks more quickly. The pilot project is a cost-share partnership between the St. Johns River Water Management District and the city of St. Augustine.

“I applaud the city of St. Augustine for its work to reduce water use and encourage best practices at the customer level to help reduce inefficient water use,” said St. Johns River Water Management District Executive Director Dr. Ann Shortelle. “Being able to see their water use history will help homeowners learn their water use behaviors and ways they can save money, such as resetting irrigation timers. Collecting real-time data will help the city better manage its system in ways like detecting leaks more quickly.”

“We are excited to partner with the St. Johns River Water Management District on this project,” said Public Works Deputy Director Todd Grant. “This pilot program is actually a continuation of a previous grant with the district that allowed the city to benchmark water use across the utility service area. The pilot program will allow the city to manage water consumption and conservation much more efficiently.”

Over the next few weeks, homes in the Heritage Park neighborhood will receive the new meters, which will be read remotely from a city vehicle passing the home. The $272,000 project will collect real-time data from each home to better determine water use habits. The district contributed nearly $90,000 toward the project.

Currently, the city’s meters are manually read every 30 days. The new technology will eventually allow the city to read all 13,000 water meters in the city in two or three days. The city plans to replace all water meters in its system with automatic meters over the next five years.

The installation will take place in late April through mid-May.