The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is making great strides in its metering project, with 91 percent of customers now with running water meters.<\/p>\n
CUC has been plagued with defective water meters and substandard meter installation. The root problem going back many years is a combination of poor field documentation, third-party meter installations, failed meter performance, and slow replacement of failed meters. <\/p>\n
CUC deputy executive director Alan Fletcher told Saipan Tribune yesterday that the agency made great progress last year in replacing failed meters as well as the documentation and\/or installation of unregistered meters and accounts. <\/p>\n
CUC records show that in August 2010, the agency had a total of 6,411 accounts to resolve. These included 2,550 smart meters that failed; 260 old meters that needed to be replaced; and 3,601 unmetered\/unregistered accounts to reconcile. <\/p>\n
As of Nov. 25, 2011, CUC only had 831 unresolved accounts, which means that a total of 5,580 cases have been resolved. Only 389 failed meters remain pending, 224 old meters that still need to be replaced, and only 406 unmetered\/unregistered accounts need to be reconciled.<\/p>\n
According to Fletcher, there were a total of 13,050 system meters as of August 2010. This figure dropped to 9,194 as of Nov. 25, 2011\u2014a decline of 3,856 meters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason for the drop is twofold. First, due to the number of meters installed by a third-party contractor circa 2004-2005, whereas multifamily buildings were outfitted with a number of water meters equal to the number of electrical meters. Typically, only one water service was used for these buildings, leaving a number of meters in the customer database that were not actually in use and listed as unregistered accounts. Second, is a drop in customer billings due to closed businesses and residential move-outs resulting from the depressed economy,\u201d Fletcher explained. <\/p>\n
Fletcher said that there has also been a similar reduction in the sewer accounts, from 2,787 to 2,532\u2014a decline of 255 accounts or a 9.2-percent drop in one year. <\/p>\n
This drop in metered accounts has placed continued financial pressure on CUC, Fletcher said, both in reduced revenue from move-outs and the drop in the monthly fixed charges. <\/p>\n
CUC has a pending rate hike petition for water and wastewater with the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission, which will decide on the matter next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is making great strides in its metering project, with 91 percent of customers now with running water meters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}