MORGANTOWN — With a $101 million upgrade to the Star City Wastewater Treatment Plant and the construction of a $50 million, 370-million-gallon reservoir both ending in recent months, you might think the Morgantown Utility Board would be ready to relax for a bit.
Not so.
MUB currently has a $390,000 contract with Strand Associates to deliver a preliminary engineering report and cost estimates for a project to address the pump building at the utility’s water treatment plant, on Don Knotts Boulevard.
Both the building and the 300 to 900 horsepower raw water pumps housed therein are aging or just plain old.
“The original pump building at MUB’s water treatment plant was constructed in the 1950s and renovated in the late 1970s. There are currently five high service pumps that pump water from the plant into the distribution system. These pumps range in age from approximately 20 to 85 years,” MUB Spokesman Chris Dale explained.
During a March information session, a representative of Strand indicated the current timeline would result in the engineering report and cost estimate in the December or January timeframe and, ultimately, an 18-month construction phase beginning in early 2025.
Further, the utility’s board of directors has tasked Strand with providing a report on how the utility can move away from manual meter reading and toward an automated system of data collection via cellular service.
“We would be able to get that data into the office without having to send employees out. It’s certainly a great green initiative because it lessens our carbon footprint out in the world,” MUB General Manager Mike McNulty said, explaining MUB currently reads meters every other month.
“This will give us real-time data rather than every other month looking in at someone’s meter and finding out, oh, wait a minute, they’ve got a toilet leak that’s been going at five gallons a minute for the last 60 days.”
Asked if the more immediate method of data collection would result in MUB moving to a monthly billing cycle instead of the current bi-monthly cycle, McNulty said “I think we would absolutely want to do that …”
Depending on the information provided by the consultant, McNulty said he could foresee the switch to an automated system beginning in 2025.
According to Dale, MUB has 10 staff members assigned to reading meters. He said those employees would be retrained to install, remove and repair meters if and when the switch to an automated process occurs. If the transition reduces the need for meter staff, he continued, those employees will be transitioned to other duties.
“No reduction in force will occur as the automated meters are introduced into the system,” Dale said, noting such a transition is still years away, “and we have a lot to learn and assess in the interim.”
