Lavonia Approves Next Step in Water Meter Updgrade

The switch to upgrade Lavonia water customers to new digital water meters is one step closer to reality.

In April, the city announced it would be making the switch to digital meters as a cost saving measure.

At their regular meeting Tuesday night, city manager Gary Fesperman recommended the city stay with their current provider, Sensus Water Meters.

“Whenever you look at the knowledge base that Sensus has, they know our system inside and out,” Fesperman said. “We are looking at the full Sensus program.”

Lavonia City manager Gary Fesperman said the city is focusing on first switching out the water customers in the county first to a drive by status meter.  That, Fesperman said would allow the meter reader to drive by and pick up the information on a computer.

Fesperman said he and Water Department officials looked at different service providers in Hartwell and in Blairsville Georgia.

Fesperman said Blairsville uses the full Sensus digital system.  He said their full system allows hundreds of water meters to be read from one location.

“We were sitting int he Wal-mart parking lot and we read over 300 meters just sitting in the parking lot,” Fesperman said. We were reading meters over a mile away. We did not get that type of read with the other system that we looked at in Hartwell.”

Fesperman said the city would apply for a Georgia Environmental Finance Authority loan/grant package to pay for the switchover.

After hearing from Fesperman, the city council approved his recommendation unanimously.  No word on when the change over to the digital system will take place.