The Peru Gazette

L-R Equipment installed inside some homes and an outside meter

Courtney Tetreault with an iPad water personnel use.

Meter reading devices used over the past several decades.

By John T Ryan

The days of Peru Water Department personnel walking to a backyard or sideyard to read a water meter will soon be history. A few weeks ago, Water/Sewer/Parks Superintendent Courtney Tetrault told the town board that installing new meter-reading technology is 90% complete. Town Water personnel have installed radio/Bluetooth technology in hundreds of meters, enabling them to read the meters on an iPad as they slowly pass by a home or business. The iPad transmits the information to the cloud storage system, which is instantly accessible for analysis and billing.

The technology captures much more usage information than the old system, enabling Tetreault’s personnel to detect unusually high water usage down to the date and hour. This information will be very helpful to residents questioning an exceptionally high water bill. Tetrault said, “In a few cases, our personnel noticed a water spike on the iPads; they stopped and immediately notified the homeowners.” The new technology is highly efficient. Tetrault said, “It used to take two men three days to read our 765 meters. Now, one man does it in one day.”

Installing the new technology began in 2013. Tetrault recalled, “Covid slowed us up. We started outside the hamlet, where most meters are newer and outside side homes. Sometimes inside the hamlet, we’ve had new equipment in a home’s basement or crawl space.”