Over 6,000 water meters in Punta Gorda have malfunctioned and are unable to generate accurate bills for customers, leaving the city to try and remedy a fractured utility system.
According to Melissa Reichert, Punta Gorda’s Assistant City Manager, the project to renovate the city’s water meters started in 2017. The goal was to install meters that automatically transmit a reading to the city without manually reading the meters.
“City Council bid the project out. We had a number of solicitations that were received, our due diligence was done and the contractor Florida Line was selected,” Reichert told Fox 4. “The meters were installed, and we had everything working up to 98.5%, but over the past couple of years pieces of the equipment started to fail.”
Now, components in more than 6,000 of the approximately 14,000 water meters installed have failed.
“It’s the transmitters that are failing,” said Reichert. “In some cases its the batteries, in very few cases is it the actual meter that is failing.”