The environment committee will be looking into a report on water demand management that was commissioned by the City of Grand Forks.
The report is part of the process the city needs to take in order to obtain a grant to install water meters.
Committee Chair Chris Moslin asked that members comment on the report in the next few weeks.
“I’m waiting to hear what the comments are going to be, because I’m expecting it to be a bit of a microcosm of the comment that’s going to come from the larger community,” Moslin said.
“Basically what it comes down to is: is it worthwhile to establish meters for the residential users and is it worthwhile to spend money on that?”
Moslin said that if the money comes from a grant it shouldn’t be much of a problem; it’s whether there are enough benefits to the meters to warrant taxpayers paying for it.
Moslin said that one of the problems the city has is keeping pressure during the summer, when the pumps are at full capacity.
“What water metering would give us is a lot more knowledge about how much each individual family uses,” he said. “The other significant thing that water metering would give us is covered in the study; where are your water losses?”
This would help the city to find areas that need infrastructure repair due to leaks and old piping that needs to be replaced and potentially make a more efficient system for the delivery of water.
Moslin said that if the city doesn’t get the grant then it would likely move towards the metering in a staged approach, beginning with asking for volunteers to have the meters installed.