New city water meters

The City of Shelton’s water customer meters are more than 20 years old and have “reached the end of their useful life,” the city states. The city is close to falling out of compliance with the state Department of Health’s regulatory requirements to ensure accurate customer billing for water use and sewage discharge.

On Tuesday evening, the Shelton City Council gave preliminary approval to awarding a contract to install already-purchased new meter boxes, lids and transmitters to replace every water meter in the city. With the new system, employees will no longer be physically reading the meters at the sites but collecting the numbers with transmitters.

Nine companies have made bids on the project, Aaron Nix, the city’s capital projects manager, told the council. The council can award the contract at its meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 15 at the Shelton Civic Center.

The engineer’s estimate for the project is from $1 million to $1.45 million The nine bids range from $947,571 to $2,430,430, Nix said.

The city report states that the staff intends to replace all meters sized three-quarters of an inch to 2 inches, but part of the bid schedule might be reduced to keep the project within budget.

This project has taken several years to go out to bid due to computer chip shortages that started during the pandemic, Nix said. The project calls for providing labor, equipment and some materials necessary for upgrading water meters for about 3,050 of the city’s residential and water users.

The city received a $900,0000 grant for the project a couple years ago, and has spent about $1.8 million on materials, Nix said.