SAN DIEGO — Faced with scathing complaints over water bills that go back years, the city of San Diego is now undertaking major changes.
This includes the way its Public Utilities Department tracks water usage, opting for a more high-tech strategy.
It's sort of a "Back to the Future" approach, overhauling the city's water meter-reading program with wireless "smart meters" — something the city had attempted about a decade earlier.
CBS 8 has reported for months on sky-high water bills from the city of San Diego. Many customers previously said that they had not been notified that their accounts had been placed on hold for a leak investigation, until they received the final bill.
"It was a pretty big shock to us to have a bill for that amount of money," one customer told CBS 8 earlier this year.
The city's Public Utilities Department is undertaking sweeping changes in the way it tracks its customers' water usage, which should lead to more accurate meter readings and accurate billing.
"Our customers and serving our customers well is our top priority," said Drew Kleis, assistant director of the Public Utilities Department's water delivery branch. "Smart meter technology really is the long term solution to this."
Kleis said the plan is to transition all of the city's roughly 286,000 water meters to "smart meters." The project will roll out over the next six years.
"It allows us to read meters remotely in near real time so that we have accurate and timely meter reading data," he told CBS 8.
This isn't the first time the city has tried using smart water meters. In 2012, the agency started rolling them out, ultimately installing about 24,000 of them. However, staffing, management and technical challenges forced the city to abandon the project in 2019.
"There were many lessons learned," Kleis said.
This time, the city is hiring an engineering consulting firm, Jacobs, to oversee the project, beginning with a three-month feasibility study, followed by procurement, pre-deployment and deployment, which should be completed by 2029.
Through this smart meter program, customers will be able to go online to check their water usage in nearly real time.
"That helps them to make smarter, more informed decisions about their water use, it can help identify when there might be a potential leak, and it gives them greater confidence in their bills when they receive them," Kleis added.
In the meantime, the city has already increased its staffing to expedite manual meter reading, upgraded its customer service technology, and is now alerting its customers when their bills are on hold.
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