The City will begin to install brand new, state-of-the-art water meters at every household throughout Medford in an effort to modernize the current antiquated and inefficient system, Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn announced. With these new meters the City will be able to better identify leaks and unintended overuse leading to more precise readings and stable rates.

The City has a two-decade old water meter reading system. The meters and equipment currently in use have reached the end of its life expectancy and need to be replaced to ensure accurate billing for the future. The City will be using an outside contractor to assist with the installations, but in the meantime Water Department staff will be replacing meters that are being estimated. The new system comes with built in acoustic leak detection to discover leaks on water mains and services.

The City will contact households and let people know when a City Water Department employee will be at their house to install the new equipment. While crews are replacing meters, users should expect a minor interruption of roughly 5 to 10 minutes in water service and the whole appointment being less than 30 minutes.

A big advantage for the new system is that the meters are ultrasonic. The meter sends radio waves back and forth through the meter, measuring change in water flow. The new system has built in acoustic leak detection to discover excess water usage on water mains and services. This will drastically reduce water leakage throughout the City bringing down the City’s unaccounted for water. The new meters are warrantied for a life of twenty years with no loss of accuracy due to ultrasonic technology. The new meters will also work with the City’s Watersmart program that allows customers to view their usage online and be alerted of high usage and leaks. The new meters will be calling in hourly giving Watersmart the additional data to make the system that much smarter at detecting leaks within homes for all residential customers in the City.

For more information, please visit the City’s Water and Sewer Department website, or call the office at 781-393-2502.