A special meeting of Hennessey’s Utility Authority last week wasn’t only all about discussion with tech representatives who will provide new water meters.

That’s because audience members did most of the questioning and talking at the Aug. 27 meeting.

The town’s current provider, Sensus (Xylem) Metering Products, was also awarded a $204,725 contract by the authority during its Aug. 12 meeting.

That project includes a $60,000 Sensus M420 Base Station.

That company has come under scrutiny by some customers whose usual water bills jumped from approximately $65 a month to $200 and $300 at their home and a business owner said her water bill went from $100 to $400 a month.

Also, customers said they were told by Town Hall staff that their water would be shut off if they didn’t pay. They said they were also told they had a water leak by Town Hall staff and to call a plumber.

How Will New System Work?

“Moving to the AMI system will put equipment on your water towers and will basically create a well with Utility Technology Services,” said T.J. Powell with UTS.

“The endpoints that you have the radios on, the ones with the mushroom caps, they’ll convert over to a fixed base and at that point what the radio does is it will read the meter every hour. Every fourth hour, it will speak the current reading of that hour and then seven days worth of hourly intervals.

“So once we can speak that to a tower that’s listening, then we’re just going to backhaul that data into a database that the utility can then look at and see what all the water readings are.”

Powell said the benefit of the AMI system is that since meters are ready hourly, they can search for consumption pattern issues.

“Like if a continuous flow event occurred on a meter right now, the only way that you know there’s a continuous flow event through a water meter is if you went to that meter and then sampled it at that time,” he said.

“With an AMI system, it’ll report those samplings every single hour so we can get historical information hour-by-hour for three years available with the touch of a button.”

At the Meeting

All five authority members were present: Mayor Randy Bohnstedt, Vice Mayor John Peach, Bert Gritz, Harold Shaw and David Jones.

Other town officers present were Treasurer Kelley Vaverka, Clerk (Office Manager) Shelly Burch, Deputy Clerk Katie Walters.

Other staff at the meeting were Town Attorney Jared Harrison, Town Administrator Tiffany Rowan and Public Works Director Alyssa Kubat.

Speakers were T.J. Powell and Jeff Shultz with Utility Technology Services.

Audience members who commented or asked questions: Korey Vendetti, Austin Whittenburg, Kelly Bullis, Ashley Zielny, Wes Hardin, Richard Simunek and Tim Barnett.

There were 15 in the audience and all were asked to sign in and that list wasn’t available to the KT&FP until Tuesday, Sept. 2, after press time of this edition.