The City of North Battleford鈥檚 installation of new AMI smart meters throughout the city is moving ahead at a slow pace.
According to the latest numbers provided to the regular council meeting Monday by Environmental Manager Jeffrey Blanchard, the project stood at 15.8 per cent completion, with 853 of 5,395 installations completed.
The biggest concern at the moment, Blanchard said, is that they are running behind with the completions. They should be closer to 25 per cent, he said.
Blanchard told council they plan to meet with KTI Limited, the company contracted to do the installation, to 鈥渓ook into their hiring plans and to have a better idea of what their project schedule is going to be.鈥�
The installations are happening by zone, with six zones going through the transition to the new meters. According to the latest report submitted to council, Zone One had 315 completed installations and 19 appointments booked.
A major step is that the city has moved into shutting off water in Zone One for those who have failed to book an appointment.
Blanchard reported that in Zone One, approximately 30 properties had received a final notice instructing residents that failure to book an appointment could result in a water shutoff. Those notifications seemed to be successful in getting things moving, as Blanchard reported that as of Monday afternoon, only eight properties were still outstanding.
Zone Two had seen some delays, and as a result pending notices of water shutoffs will not be happening in that zone for another three weeks.
Significant discussion Monday had to do with problems seen during the transition to the new meters, such as notification issues.
Mayor David Gillan and Councillor Len Taylor both reported there had been residents who had received multiple notifications even though their smart meters are installed.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 want anybody shut off erroneously,鈥� said Gillan.
Blanchard indicated that during the issuing of final notices they discovered that KTI had duplicate entries on approximately 20 properties that were on the water shutoff list. The city was able to catch some of those through multiple verification steps being taken.
Blanchard did report there were some complaints from residents. There had been 10 noise complaints and those were related to the 3/4 inch meters, which produced a sound at a higher pitch.
The majority of complaints have been related to the pending water shutoffs. Blanchard indicated the complaints were now a hybrid of 鈥渨e don鈥檛 want you in the house because of COVID鈥� or 鈥渨e don鈥檛 want you to shut our water off.鈥�
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