Easton Water Serves Its Customers with Pride By Deploying The Badger® ORION® System
Located about 25 miles south of Boston and 20 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean, the Town of Easton, Massachusetts is an eastern seaboard municipality with a long history. Settlers arrived in Easton in 1694 and the town was incorporated in 1725.
Life is good for Easton’s more than 23,000 residents. So good the community was ranked 48th on Money Magazine’s 2007 list of the best places to live in America.
Roots in the 1800s
Like many things in Easton, the town’s water system dates back more than a century. “It began operating in 1887,” Water Division Operations Manager John J. Marsh said, “and some of the original cast-iron pipes that were installed then are still in use today.”
Marsh manages a department of 14 and is responsible for the system’s seven wells, more than 160 miles of water mains, and 7,134 services. Average water processed and pumped in a day is 1.9 million gallons; highest usage for 2006 was 3,644,000 gallons on August 1.
Marsh was also instrumental in the process that led to the installation of the Badger® ORION® AMR system. “Two of our objectives in transitioning to ORION were to be able to do our reads in one day and to go to quarterly billing,” he said, “which we felt would help us serve our customers better.”
Continuing a tradition of excellence
Prior to installing Badger ORION, the Easton Water Division relied on a Badger Meter TRACE® system and before that used Badger Read-o-Matic® technology. Badger Read-o-Matic featured a counter that was wired to the meter in the basement and attached to the outside of the residence. This eliminated the need for meter readers to enter homes. “It seems basic now but it was a major improvement when we installed it,” Marsh said.
“We’ve been a Badger customer for more than 30 years,” he continued, “and try to replace our meters every ten years to keep them in peak working condition. They’re our source of revenue and help us provide excellent water at reasonable rates.”
ORION passes the test and wins funding
Prior to committing to the Badger ORION system, the Water Division purchased 100 Badger ORION transmitters in 2004, tried them out, and were very satisfied with the results. “The test went so well we felt we should transition to ORION as soon as we could,” Marsh recalled.
Marsh and Department of Works Director Wayne P. Southworth made the decision but needed to explain the expenditure to the Board of Selectmen—as government representatives in Easton are called—and town budget committees.
Most meters in basements
Installation of the new meters and Badger ORION transmitters began toward the end of 2004. Almost all of Easton’s water meters are housed in basements because temperatures can fall below freezing in winter.
“We do have about 390 meters that are in pits dug five feet below the surface,” Marsh said. “Because the depth of the pit is well below the frost line, the warmth of the Earth heats the cavity, so we can put the meter at about 12 inches below the surface without worrying about it freezing.”
Residents contacted for appointments
With most equipment housed in basements, the Water Division needed to enter residences to put in a new meter and Badger ORION transmitter. Marsh said his department sent out a series of four letters asking people to call for appointments.
“Residents were very accommodating,” Marsh recalled, “and we did our best to meet the needs of busy families. When necessary, we arranged to do the installation work on Saturdays and even scheduled some change-outs two months in advance.”
Water Division personnel did the conversions, completing more than 7,100 services by early 2006.
Badger ORION meeting objectives
“Now, with ORION we’re able to read every meter in about six hours and are billing on a quarterly basis,” Marsh said. “The speed of the system is impressive.” Marsh pointed out that one of the reasons the Badger ORION system can read so quickly is the bubble-up feature that sends out usage data every four seconds. “It’s no problem to get reads while traveling down the road at the posted limit of 45 miles per hour,” he continued.
Leak detection saves water and money
Like many Badger ORION users, Marsh said he and the Water Division’s customers are particularly happy with the system’s leak detection capability.
“We’ve caught a lot of leaks before they got out of hand,” he emphasized. “In fact, during 2006, we think ORION helped us save 14 million gallons of water that otherwise would have been wasted. That was worth $62,000 to residents.”
Badger ORION supports motto
Marsh stressed that he “absolutely recommends ORION” to other utilities and enjoys introducing the system to people in his position from other communities.
“Our motto is ‘Serving Easton with Water Works Pride,’” Marsh concluded, “and we think ORION is helping us do that.”
About the author:
Ted Schaar is a freelance writer based in Brookfield, Wisconsin.