Over a couple of thousand new water meters arrived for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. as it continues its effort to address faulty meters on Saipan and hopes to complete installation in the next coming weeks. <\/p>\n
According to CUC acting executive director Gary Camacho, the arrival of the 2,300 water meters is part of their \u201caggressive meter change out program.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs previously reported there are a lot of issues with a lot of water meters on island and CUC has since implemented an aggressive water meter replacement program to address those meters,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n
Camacho added that they initiated the program for a couple of weeks now and is a co-joint effort with water division personnel and billing section.<\/p>\n
They hope to finish the program in five weeks, after which \u201ca complete review and assessment will be made to determine how we continue on the program,\u201d Camacho said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis program that we implemented addresses two issues, one of them is water loss and also, customers can now get an accurate billing of their accounts,\u201d Water Division operations supervisor Bernard Kermius said.<\/p>\n
Kermius said they have nine teams currently working on the program. <\/p>\n
According to water meter supervisor Glenn Dikito, they can change 15 to 18 water meters per crew member per day.<\/p>\n
\u201cA meter box if it\u2019s clear, it can take anywhere about five to fifteen minutes, whereas if we find a box that\u2019s full of mud or dirt, it will be harder for us,\u201d Dikito said.<\/p>\n
They have so far installed 600 water meters starting from areas where they have 24-hour water service beginning in Koblerville and working their way up to the northern side through San Jose and Gualo Rai.<\/p>\n
Dikito said the current meters, the Sensus meters, are expected to last longer. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe smart meters, they are all metal but these [Sensus] meters its base is plastic now. The tendency of the smart meter, it will leak from the base where there are four bolts, it will leak between the gaskets or the metal itself gets eaten up because our water we have chlorine. Chlorine and the type of metal which is brass do not get along,\u201d Dikito said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t had major problems with these,\u201d he added<\/p>\n
According to accounts and financial manager Betty Terlaje, CUC has over 9,000 active water accounts on Saipan.<\/p>\n
Based on active accounts and what is seen in the billing system, about 4,000 accounts were reported to have malfunctioning meters to U.S Environmental Protection Agency last year.<\/p>\n
This number went down to around 2,100 last month and it continues to go down as CUC continues to install new meters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe delay in the progress is really the delay in the receiving of the meters. Now that we have 2,000 meters, that number can easily be washed out,\u201d Terlaje said.<\/p>\n
However, Dikito said they might need to change more meters on island and eventually replace the older ones that are prone to malfunctioning. Terlaje noted that new accounts are being added as well. <\/p>\n
\u201cI assume that there will be more because of the older meters that are malfunctioning out there,\u201d Dikito said.<\/p>\n
CUC said they will order more meters as their inventory goes down. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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