A Water Meter Alert

The town will be calling on residents and business owners to make an appointment to replace their water meters

By Mark E. Vogler

The Town of Saugus is about to enter a new technological age of water metering operations that will allow customers to monitor their water usage and receive an alert when they have a water leak or burst pipe that could prove costly.

Home and business owners will soon be receiving postcards in the mail requesting that they set up appointments to get their water meters replaced. “What we want to do is make sure everybody knows this is a mandatory situation where the town is replacing the water meters,” Town Manager Scott C. Crabtree told the Board of Selectmen at their meeting Tuesday night (March 4).

“Residents and businesses will be receiving postcards from Mass Installation Incorporated – that’s the vendor that we’ve contracted with to do the replacements for us. They’ll be working along with the town and will be working to do a schedule,” Crabtree said.

“And they’ll be scheduling these by appointment, either by phone – the resident can call and make an appointment – or Mass Installation Incorporated has a website that residents will be able to go on and actually schedule an appointment online to have their meter replaced,” he said.

Mass Installation, Inc., based in Norwood, Mass., has a contract with the town to replace about 9,700 water meters. In addition, the company will install encoder registers, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system modules, data collection infrastructure, hardware, reading software, meter data management software, a customer portal and integration with the billing system while providing training on both software and hardware. “This initiative aims to enhance water metering operations, improve customer service, and promote water conservation,” according to town documents.

The project – which is estimated to cost about $6 million – will be funded by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and will be managed by Weston & Sampson Engineers, Inc. Installation of the new meters must be completed by Nov. 30, 2026.

“One of the great things about this project is it won’t have any impact on water and sewer rates for the ratepayers – the residents and businesses that will have their water meters replaced,” Crabtree told The Saugus Advocate following Tuesday night’s meeting.

During Crabtree’s briefing of selectmen Tuesday night, Board Chair Debra Panetta wanted to know whether the project will start at any particular part of town. “No. Everybody will get a postcard and it’s a matter of scheduling appointments. That’s my understanding,” Crabtree replied.

“There will be time slots for people to schedule their appointments. Be on the lookout,” the town manager said.

Crabtree stressed that the town will be involved in an ongoing public education effort before and during the installation of the new meters. “We’re going to have some information coming out in the next week or so and it will be on our [Town of Saugus] website as well,” Crabtree said.

“We’ll try to do as many informational things as we can at every meeting, and we’ll try to talk about it so people are aware of it,” he said.

Selectmen periodically receive complaints about high water meter readings that lead to exorbitant bills. But they have no authority to do anything in response to these types of complaints.

Crabtree predicted that residents and businesses will have an easier time managing their water bills once the new meters are in place. “The great part of this – the residents will be able to register in a customer portal so they can monitor their own water and also set their own alerts,” Crabtree said.

“So, if they have a high use of water, they will actually get an alert, so they will know that something is going on … that they have a leak or something or a pipe burst,” he said.

“It’s such a great asset that we’re going to have that will help the residents monitor their water usage so we don’t have a situation where in six months they’re in Florida and their water bill has gone through the roof. I think this will be very helpful,” he said.

With the new meters, Water Department employees will no longer have to drive to homes and businesses to get meter readings. The new technology will have the readings sent to Town Hall instead.