Moses Lake to budget $1M match toward water meter grant.

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to approve a resolution supporting the application requesting $1,000,000 in federal funding assistance under the Water SMART: Water and Energy Efficiency Grant for the installation and implementation of advanced metering infrastructure throughout the city.

Water Services Manager Chad Strevy introduced the resolution. 

“We're in the process of applying for a Water SMART grant to finish the AMI meter endpoint project. So that will allow us to get the meters upgraded by 2027, and that will give every customer the ability to see their usage,” Strevy said. “The total cost of the project is going to be $2 million to finish the project. The grant is 50-50 match, so Water SMART would pay $1 million and the city would pay $1 million.”

Strevy said the city is already in the process of implementing the new automated water meters. 

“We spent $400,000 In 2023. We're spending another $500,000 in 2024,” he said. “The American Waterworks Association has done several studies, and by just giving the customer a portal to see their usage and notification of leaks, you save, right off the bat, 2% to 10% savings in water usage. That is significant.”

The $900,000 the city has spent so far is in addition to their $1 million contribution if the city is awarded the grant. 

“The system that we have now is beyond its life, so it has to be replaced. They're all battery-operated things and they are failing at an unprecedented rate right now,” Strevy said. “We have several hundred right now of the old system that have failed, which means that a meter reader has to go every month and read that meter visually.”

Council member Mark Fancher commented on the subject. 

“I believe with the new system we don't need a meter reader,” Fancher said. “And then also, I think the other big issue is not only can the homeowner monitor it, but you guys will have real-time monitoring, in the case of an over usage or leak.”

Council member Deanna Martinez said she is in favor of the resolution. 

“My understanding is that we need to replace these meters anyway, and this grant would help us to replace them sooner and somebody else is paying for half of them,” Martinez said. “Considering our push to try and get our citizens to conserve water more, I think this would be just another good tool to have … People are listening and trying their best to do what they can, and I see this is just another way to assist our citizens to help conserve water.”

Speaking on the future impact of the new meters, council member Victor Lombardi provided his input. 

“This revolutionizes how we look at water, it really does. For a city, and like other cities, that suffers some data deprivation, as we kind of crawl into the 2020s, what this does, it will eventually end the tier system, which is a pay model,” Lombardi said. “It will allow a homeowner to customize the amount of water that they want to use and what they want to pay for…To me, that's a better way of getting the public to conserve water.”

Stevy clarified that the system would cost roughly $120,000 a year depending on the number of houses in Moses Lake for the cloud services that allow the city to collect and view the data. Stevy said that the new system will allow moving two employees currently dedicated to reading meters into new roles. 

Council member Don Myers said the meters will allow the city to develop new homes previously inhibited by water capacity.

“This is going to help save the system capacity because I know there's a couple zones that we are up at the ceiling,” Myers said. “If we have this 2% to 10% water savings, that allows for new homes to come in and be developed, and I know we're seeing some pretty crazy growth in housing. If we can have a faster fix, by 2027 have an additional capacity to provide these houses, that’s going to be money in our pocket, not just savings on the water.”

Mayor Dustin Swartz said the city needs to be careful in the way it implements the new system.

“With that data then, and what we find from it, we may be asking the citizens to make some sacrifices…I would hope that the man hours that are spent currently on reading meters, we realize a true savings in that,” Swartz said. “So if those employees are still employed by the city of Moses Lake, they should be employed doing something completely different that's equally, if not more constructive. So I would like to see a report on that at some point see where those efforts are going now that we've done this. The city needs to take some sacrifices as well, or become more efficient.”

The council then voted unanimously to pass the resolution supporting the grant application. 

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.

    The city of Moses Lake’s Well 14, located at the north side of the parking lot of the Sportsmans Warehouse. Moses Lake City Council supported a grant application for new water meters during Tuesday’s regular meeting.