Westchester Planning Major $2M Water Meter Replacement Project 

A smart water meter by Core and Main. Westchester is looking to replace its older residential meters with new Core and Main smart meters. | Panama City Beach 

Sunday, September 18, 2022 || By Michael Romain || @maywoodnews 

The village of Westchester is looking to replace all of its residential water meters, many of which are decades old and giving partial readings of residents’ water usage, resulting in lost revenue for the village. 

The cost of replacing more than 6,000 existing residential meters with new iPERL smart water meters sold by Core and Main, could be close to $2 million, village officials said at a board meeting on Sept. 13. 

Officials said Core and Main is still working on a precise cost estimate and there are some ways to go before installation starts. Village officials said they’ll pay for the new smart meters with federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. Westchester is slated to receive $2.2 million first- and second-round ARPA funds. 

They said some meters are so old that Core and Main representatives aren’t picking them up as they inventory and evaluate the village’s current water meters. 

Steve Crowley, Westchester’s public works foreman, said some existing residential meters are capturing as little as 15% to 20% of residents’ water usage. Other meters do much better but still don’t capture all of the water use, he said. 

“The majority [of residential water meters] were in the 40% and 50% range,” Crowley said. 

“An iPerl is guaranteed for 20 years to read at 99.9% accuracy,” he added. “If it does not, it’s free of charge to replace it.”

Village officials said the new meters would also be able to consistently monitor residents’ water usage so that officials can send alerts out when usage is getting too high. 

New meters could mean higher bills for some residents but only because the bills will finally start reflecting the volume of water residents are using, officials said.