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New, more accurate water meters coming to Elmhurst

Elmhurst residents likely will soon be paying more accurately for the water they use as the city pursues plans to install new water meters and an online water main leak detection system, as well as making improvements to its Water Reclamation Facility.

The city council this week approved a proposal to issue slightly more than $9.6 million in general obligation bonds, with most of that money going toward the new meters.

Alderman Kevin York said the city was able to get a better than expected interest rate for the 15-year bond issue - 2.6 percent instead of the projected 3.25 percent - because of the competitive market.

"So we saved the users, the citizens of Elmhurst, a significant amount of money," said York, who heads the council's finance committee.

City officials say they plan to install about 15,000 new residential and commercial water meters over roughly a 12-month period.

They also plan to use some of the bond money to make infrastructure repairs to the city's Water Reclamation Facility.

"Unfortunately, water rates rise over time," York said.

He said the new meters are needed to better track use of the city's water supply.

He said there's a significant difference - roughly 18 percent - between how much water the city buys from the DuPage Water Commission and how much it's selling to its customers.

That means, he said, "we're losing 18 percent of our water commodity and we're trying to figure out where that is."

The city's goal is to reach the Illinois Department of Natural Resources goal of less than 10 percent unaccounted for water by September 2019.

Part of the problem, he said, may be traced to the city's older water meters, which are less sensitive to newer, low-flow devices.

"So we think we're going to pick up some volume in the new meters because they're more sensitive to lower flow applications." he said.

Water rates likely will go up, he said, "but we expect that increase to be stabilizing as years go along."

"The fact of the matter is we need to continuously improve the system, replace water mains," he said. "We have a serious infrastructure problem in the city of Elmhurst in regard to our water mains and the infrastructure to our water distribution system, so we need to work on it.

"And you can't work on it without spending money, unfortunately," he said.

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