While the tranquil coastal community of Seal Rock, Oregon, serves as a retreat for seasonal residents, managing water services across the area is a year-round responsibility.
Seal Rock Water District (SRWD) Board of Commissioners is committed to reducing non-revenue water loss to ensure quality customer service and exceed progressive water conservation standards set by the state of Oregon. To improve customer response time with daily and hourly consumption monitoring, the District decided to upgrade to an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system from Sensus, a Xylem brand, to enable real-time alerts for leaks and reduce unaccounted for water.
SRWD deployed the Sensus AMI system across its 2,572 endpoints with SR II® residential and OMNI™ commercial water meters. Backed by the two-way FlexNet® communication network, the system gave district technicians the ability to remotely monitor water use and address leaks in near real-time.
“With the Sensus AMI system deployed, we can now detect a water leak and work with the customer to have it resolved within the hour,” said SRWD Utility Billing Clerk Brendi Hargrove. “The program instantly improved our billing processes and helped us become more efficient.”
The water district has also rolled out the Sensus Customer Portal to bolster water conservation efforts and bring customers in on the action.
“With our AMI rollout, people see the benefits that data offers and they’ve bought into our vision for water conservation,” said Hargrove.
Since completing their deployment, SRWD’s unaccounted for water has fallen to around 12 percent—well below the state’s 15 percent benchmark.
“We treat water as a precious resource,” said SRWD General Manager Adam Denlinger. “By using sustainable technologies like AMI, we can ensure water is available for future generations.”
Read the full case study about Seal Rock Water District’s AMI deployment, return on investment and future plans for conservation.
