GUAM Waterworks Authority General Manager Martin L. Roush, in a presentation at the Rotary Club of Northern Guam meeting yesterday, encouraged the community “to set the standard and put out an outcry” to help the water utility achieve its goal of providing improved services on the island.

The water utility, according to Roush, recently embarked on initiatives that will increase consumer confidence by addressing key concerns such as bad billing, water outages, and pressure problems put forward by water utility customers.

One of the projects GWA recently launched was the installation of advanced Badger meters to replace old meters all over the island. The project, Roush said, will hopefully address bad billing issues.

“We have installed 4,000 badger meters starting in the middle of August. We can average 3,000 meters a month and we have proven that we can do that even with bad weather. But we’ve had to do a little bit of overtime to do that,” Roush said.

“We have a lot of confidence in these meters and they’re the same design as the old census meters, which are the ones that have been on the ground for 30 years and we know those work. GWA will put in meters that we know will work. It’s the same design so we know there’s no risk,” he further said.

According to Roush, the Badger meters were acquired at a good price, much less than what was previously invested by the water utility for the Metron Farnier meters.

So far, he said, the authority has purchased $4 million worth of meters. The Public Utilities Commission and Consolidated Commission on Utilities, Roush added, allowed GWA to buy $6 million worth of meters, which could go up to $7.2 million after the approval of a change order request.

Confidence

“We have the confidence that these meters will work and we won’t get the zero reads and the low reads that we were getting with the Metron Farnier meters. We’ll get that revenue stability. There won’t be back bills for customers. Those two things will make a big difference,” Roush stressed.

After the first step of installing the new advanced meters, GWA is also planning to set up an advanced testing facility with a trained test group who will maintain and check the new meters.

“So every year, we will go around and test a certain percentage of our meters so we’ll know their accuracy rate. It’s more moving into a culture of a modern utility with a meter test shop and getting the maintenance and operations tied together,” Roush said.

GWA is also undertaking leak detection, leak repair, and line replacement projects to improve water services.

“The quicker we fix leaks, the quicker the people’s water pressure are restored. The quicker we repair the lines, the quicker we start solving some of the pressure problems. Those are the projects that I think are going to help the customers the most. At the same time, GWA has seen substantial savings with these projects,” Roush said.

Roush also reported that the water utility has already reduced its Navy water purchases by “over a million dollars a year.”

“Navy water is expensive. The more production that we have in our wells, in our treatment plants in Santa Rita spring, the less Navy water we have to buy. It’s very expensive compared to what we produce. That saves us about a million dollars a year in savings,” Roush concluded.