New North Las Vegas meters aimed at saving money and water

North Las Vegas will spend the next two years replacing millions of dollars worth of water meters, and Randy DeVaul could not be happier about it.

”This is going to be a game changer for the North Las Vegas utilities department,” DeVaul, the department director, said.

The nearly $20 million advanced metering program will replace more than 88,000 residential units. The city approved the purchase of the units last week.

DeVaul said the new units provide myriad benefits, including water conservation, better accounting of usage, and the opportunity for improved customer service.

Existing units, which the city started installing in 2004, send a signal to trucks that drive by to gather usage data. But North Las Vegas faced a problem with upward of 800 units per month having dead batteries, requiring workers to take manual readings, DeVaul said.

That left city leaders with a decision: replace about $1 million worth of batteries a year and stick with technology that is more than a decade old, or make a big investment into an advanced 20-year program.

The new meters will send usage data directly to the city.

“Everybody now will be able to look at how they’re using their water and where they can find ways to reduce their usage,” he said.

The meters will also help the city reduce the amount of water it uses that goes unbilled.

Currently, about 8 percent of the water used in North Las Vegas is unbilled due to leaks in the system or under-registering meters, DeVaul said. Individually, the old meters do not account for 1 to 3 percent of the water that flows through them, he said.

Bronson Mack, spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said meters begin under-recording as they age, but hitting the 8 percent mark of unaccounted-for water is “actually pretty darn good.”

The new meters, DeVaul said, will blow that figure away because they are guaranteed to be 99.5 percent accurate for 20 years.

“If you don’t know how much you’re using today, it’s really hard to gauge if you use any less tomorrow,” Mack said.

North Las Vegas has budgeted 10 temporary positions to roll out the program over the next two years. The program is expected to begin by the end of the year.

With the added positions, the total cost of the program is nearly $24 million, but DeVaul said the investment is going to make the job of collecting data easier and more efficient.

“I really don’t see any downside in this,” he said.

Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter.