City Of Broken Arrow Installing New Water Meters

The City of Broken Arrow is continuing a big project that will help residents get a better understanding of their water usage. Broken Arrow has roughly 40,000 water meters all over the city that have to be read every month, which can take a long time.

The city just recently finished installing automatic meters that will make collecting water usage data a lot easier, and the city has plans to take things a step further. With these new meters, workers can collect water usage data by just driving up and collecting the information from a signal that the meter sends out.

The new meters will also store up to three months of data so that customers can start to see what their regular usage looks like over time.

The next step includes setting up an advanced meter infrastructure, which will allow the new meters to send information to a water network and eliminate the need for drive by collections in most cases while also providing real time information about water usage for customers.

"The most important part is the customer service. The customers being able to just log on and see 'oh this is what my bill will be' or 'whoa there is something going on with my bill, with my meter' and maybe I should have it checked or give either the utilities department a call or maybe perhaps a plumber call and just find out what's going on," Charles Vokes, the Broken Arrow Utilities Director said.

Vokes said he hopes that the new advanced meter infrastructure will also be able to do things like send out automated text messages or something similar to alert customers when their water usage seems irregular allowing the customer to get it checked out sooner rather than later.

Vokes said that he believes it will take about a year to finish getting the infrastructure in place for the advanced meters.