All Woodstock homes require an upgrade in water meters, beginning in 2027
By MARK SCHADENBERG
Technology
is advancing quickly, but when a product also becomes obsolete due to wear-and-tear,
it’s time to be replaced.
The
County of Oxford administration building’s front foyer on Tuesday hosted a Water
Meter Information Night – a great opportunity for me to learn why the water
meters in Woodstock homes are needed to be upgraded beginning in 2027 and to
pick up more details on the water and waste water systems in general in Oxford.
There were 4 info tables / stations featuring background details on all Oxford
water systems, and then 2 more tables with a focus on water meters.
Even
though the event was hosted by Oxford, it was Woodstock water department rep
Tom Fuller who passed along some terrific history on water meters because
before 2008 there was a flat rate billing for water consumption. Beginning in
2008, water meters were installed in all Woodstock residential houses,
including multi-family buildings. A full metering system for water usage billing
began in 2011.
Now,
15 years later the equipment has changed, but so has the technology for home
owners gaining an ability to monitor their own consumption – to conserve water
and to possibly find leaks in their system such as on-going running toilet.
With
cell phones and ‘Apps’ dominating the consumers choice and desire to control
quantities and make predictions (Apps are popular for weather, garbage day,
etc), the new water meters will have the capability to create live data for a
customer just as your cell phone might update you weekly on the time you have
spent with your device. The new App device will also send you an alert if an
anomaly is detected in your household trends which could be something like
forgetting to turn off your backyard sprinkler. This idea could become very
important if you’re on vacation in the winter.
Keep
in mind, the more water you consume, the higher your bill. While I enjoyed math
in high school 40+ years ago, to comprehend the hump-back billing format system
is complex as you’re billed low for low cubic meter of consumption, more (per
cubic meter) for medium usage to encourage water reduction, and then for the
highest capacity users a lower rate per cubic meter as the quantity user is most
certainly industry.
In
Woodstock, therefore, all 17,000 data collecting meters will be replaced over
the next few years.
As
for the actual meters – 13,000 -- due to age, accuracy fail, and lime buildup
have reached end-of-life and need to be upgraded and replaced with new devices.
Overall,
the County water system covers more than 31,000 clients.
I’ve
always said water is a “precious resource” and it most certainly is. There are
many reasons to monitor your utilization of H2O.
Brandon
Murphy (Pictured: An outstanding Junior C defenceman in 1990s for Woodstock Navy Vets), who is the County’s supervisor of water and waste water, reminded me
that Oxford is lucky to have the (so-called) Sweaburg Swamp and it’s 8 wells
which supply water to both treatment / distribution systems in Woodstock at
Southside Park and on Bower Hill Road. Woodstock has water towers at Cowan
Sportsplex to assist storage on north side of Pittock and a tower to serve
Toyota also, plus other pumping stations scattered around the City.
There
does still exist water department (enforcement) pickup trucks who monitor
household lawn watering practices to make sure the even-day even-house 6-9 6-9 procedure
is maintained. The current water meters
also tabulate your usage for billing purposes with ERTH Solutions simply
driving around the neighbourhoods with a cellular tabulator called LDE/M (or
low density metered)
Another
important factor in the County / City relationship is that the County owns the
waste water treatment plant on Admiral Street, which also is utilized by
Innerkip and Embro for water purifying and then returning the water (effluent
free, of course) to the Thames River water course west of Tecumseh Street.
For
full infrastructure street replacement, often upgrades in pipe sizes are
required, such as the Nesbitt and Vanier current construction – which I’m told –
is receiving an up-size to 8-inch pipes from 6-inch supply under the roads.
Naturally,
the County has an extremely strict asset management plan on all its water
systems around the County. Oxford’s senior manager of water and waste water Don
Ford was also at Tuesday’s open house.
Ford, Murphy and Fuller all confirmed to me that the actual installation
project will be work hired by a third-party contractor – similar to the idea
that Emterra picks up Woodstock recycling for the province.
The city and county
water staff will coordinate any necessary water shutoffs along the way to
households. Ford added that street geography will be the game plan to complete
the process of visiting each home / property.
“The city will be
completed in sections and the plan for installation will be part of the
suppliers bid submission along with the schedule for staff review and approval,”
says Ford.
“Current water storage (capacity)
in the city is approximately 32,745 m³ of water storage and it is provided
within the Bower Hill and Southside Park reservoirs and the Northwest (Cowan
Sportsplex) and East (TMMC) water towers,” Ford explained.
The most recent Oxford Water and Waster Water Master Plan was penned and
approved by County Council in 2024. Since plans and forecasts are extremely paramount,
that report calculated Woodstock’s population to be 67,295 by 2046.
MARK SCHADENBERG
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