Badgers to Replace Fireflies

Santa Fe and Badger Inc. enter $8.3 million agreement for new water-meter readers

By Justin Horwath

Santa Fe city councilors on Wednesday unanimously approved an $8.3 million, 10-year contract with a Wisconsin company that calls for it to install new water-meter reading devices at tens of thousands of locations across Santa Fe.

With the vote, officials in Santa Fe are hoping to move past a broken relationship between City Hall and Datamatic LTD, the supplier of the Firefly meter-reading devices whose allegedly faulty performance triggered the city to sue the Texas-based company, which filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this year.

Badger Meter Inc. is scheduled to start a project to install 34,000 meter-reading devices in March 2015.

Evaluators chose Badger over seven other companies in part because its customer services system offers a web portal where customers will be able to track real-time data on water usage, according to a city memo. The meter-reading system also boasts "faster leak detection" through text message alerts to water customers and the city's Utility Division, states the memo.

Customers complained that the Firefly devices didn't properly read water meters, leaving leaks undetected. Many of the residents and businesses named in SFR's

top-10 water guzzlers

list published last March cited leaks as the reason behind the high usage.

Click here

to see the city's agreement with Badger.

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