Orange Cove Water Meters

City or Orange Cove

Location

2014

Construction Date

$2,300,000

Project Cost

Project Overview

Working under contract as the City Engineer for the City of Orange Cove since 2001, Yamabe & Horn led the project to install water meters throughout the 1,900 water service locations within the City. Their role was comprehensive, handling the funding requirements, designing the system and managing the construction phase.

Funding Sources:
California Department of Public Health

Project Team:
Gary Horn, PE
Jerry Jones, PE

Project Origin

In 2012 the California Department of Public Works adjusted their requirements for Cities qualifying as severely disadvantaged communities, qualifying Orange Cove in the process. They were approved for 100% funding to improve their water control systems, which led to the choice of installing water meters on all water service locations in the City.

This project will install new water meters on every service within the City of Orange Cove. The meters will be read electronically and send daily reading reports to the City Public Works Department.

Project Details

The design of the water meter system required the identification and recording of the location of every water service location throughout the City. Given the ad-hoc nature of some of the residential units within the City, the survey team was challenged with determining the service locations for multiple units on a single lot. Once they were all identified, Yamabe & Horn could proceed with ease to design the system given their experience with other water meter systems.

The water meters are projected to reduce water usage 10%-20% for the City through multiple means. The first is simply the awareness and nominal charge for water usage by the residents. Another significant source of conservation is through electronic monitoring of every meter in the system. Meters that do not show zero flow for at least 15 minutes within a 24-hour period a will notify Public Works staff of a potential leak. At that point, the Public Works staff can contact the property owner of the potential leak with options to fix it.

Yamabe & Horn is currently pursuing additional funding that will allow the Public Works staff to repair the leaks at no cost to the property owner, accelerating the conservation gains in the process.

Future plans for the system include diverting non-potable water to public use outlets for landscaping, providing further savings to the City.