Lessons from Palomar Mountain Water on protecting revenue and modernizing operations
When Palomar Mountain Mutual Water Company began planning to replace its 225 manually read meters, Renee Forero-Cook, the general manager, was not simply looking for new technology. Like many operators of small water systems across California, Renee was trying to solve practical problems with limited staff and limited resources. The problems: improving billing accuracy, rapid leak detection, reducing or eliminating staff time spent reading meters, and making better operational decisions—issues that are all too familiar to most water system operators.
Palomar's experience is a great case study in meter changeout planning, which equates to success for both the utility and customer. A meter replacement project is not simply about changing out hardware; it is about protecting the financial and operational health of the system.
How does a meter protect the financial well-being of a system? Great question. Every water system has one asset that measures its billable product: the water meter. Treatment plants, storage tanks, wells, pumps, and distribution systems are essential infrastructure, but every gallon a utility produces and delivers becomes revenue only if it is measured accurately. In that sense, the water meter functions as a water system's cash register.
As meters age, their accuracy can decline, particularly at lower flow rates. The result is a slow but steady loss of billable water over time. Much like a frog in a boiling pot; if you turn the heat up slowly enough, the frog doesn't notice until it's too late. The change is so subtle that operators never see a remarkable loss. It just happens gradually, one gallon at a time across dozens or hundreds of service connections, reducing the revenue available for maintenance, emergency repairs, capital improvements, and long-term infrastructure investment.
For Palomar Mountain, improving meter accuracy was about more than automating meter reads. It was about protecting the revenue that supports the entire water system while giving a two-person staff better information to manage it.
A full system meter changeout can be unsettling for both operators and their board members, especially for those who have had a bad experience in the past. One way to "test drive" an operating system or new technology is to run a product pilot or demo of the new hardware and/or software. Rather than committing to a blind full-system changeout of all meters at once, Palomar Mountain began with a demo of three advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) cellular connected ultrasonic meters from Resource Monitor.
The pilot meters were placed where the data would be most useful. Within the first week, one of the meters alerted Renee of continuous flow of approximately 500 gallons per hour at a local community building. Under the utility's annual (yes, annual) manual-reading schedule, that leak might not have been detected until the next billing cycle, when it would have yielded an unusually high water bill that required a tremendous amount of attention, but only after the damage had been done.
Instead of a 360,000-gallon-per-month leak that equated to an unpayable bill, the data showed the flow pattern as it occurred in near real time. Renee estimates that the information saved the utility's two-person crew approximately 20 hours trying to investigate and locate an unknown leak and an untold amount of money for the customer.
The pilot/demo became the proof of concept that higher quality data delivered more often is not only useful and convenient but vital. The value extended beyond detecting a single potentially very expensive leak to actually saving the customer and the staff time and money.
During the pilot/demo, staff had time to become comfortable with the software, understand the alerts, review the billing integration export procedure, and prove up the compatibility of installation before a full system deployment. The board also saw real, measurable operational benefits rather than relying solely on projections.
A pilot is not simply a test of whether connected metering technology works; it is an opportunity to determine how new equipment and technology will fit into a utility's actual operations. Compatibility with staff, installation, billing software, and system components can be tested prior to an expensive purchase or commitment.
In many systems, the same staff responsible for treatment, distribution, customer service, emergencies, and routine maintenance are often expected to complete a meter changeout project. Palomar Mountain built its installation schedule around what staff could realistically sustain after the pilot/demo experience of three actual meter replacements. Palomar usually schedules only four or five meter swaps per day, even when the replacements may appear to be easy. Being realistic and leaving room for the things that can slow or derail a project is important. Every system is subject to unforeseen challenges: people (both customers and staff), Mother Nature, emergencies, machinery and equipment failures, and any number of daily surprises. Setting realistic expectations and planning for the transition and process will yield the best result.
Difficult meter replacements should be identified and scheduled separately, while meter banks with similar configurations can be grouped to improve efficiency and keep the average install time down. Logistics are another factor that Palomar Mountain considered prior to a full system changeout. The lack of a forklift, for example, means shipments must arrive by liftgate and be broken down by hand into manageable quantities. Storage and some form of transport to the meter locations is another obvious concern. Four or five meters for the daily swaps didn't take up too much room in a service truck, and staff could still respond to their normal required duties with little interruption.
In the water industry, implementation support matters almost as much as the equipment itself. Coordinating deliveries, configuring software ahead of time, training staff, and quickly resolving issues help keep a project moving. Consider the support, training and response from a vendor during the pilot/demo. Your experience with a vendor or manufacturer prior to the commitment of a large purchase can tell you a lot about what to expect "after the sale."
Each outgoing meter in a full system swap carries a final reading that likely doesn't correspond with the last day of a billing cycle, so having a plan and process for collecting and storing previous meter data is important. The final "old" meter reading, serial number, address, etc., need a place to be stored at the time of a swap, and thinking through how a system can efficiently and effectively store that data should be a concern.
Palomar Mountain records the old meter's serial number and final read at the time of replacement with a photograph of the register whenever possible. They also retain removed meters until the billing cycle closes so a disputed reading can be checked against the physical device.
Unique billing identifiers may also be stored as part of the process for locations or customers that are not identified by a conventional address. Palomar Mountain was able to maintain unique identification information from each meter so that each export aligns with the utility's existing customer records.
Take away: think through what may be unique to your system and have a plan for how that information will sync with existing processes or records.
Also, while meter swaps are occurring, meter location info can be refined and stored. GPS is now accurate to within a couple of feet in most areas, and logging the install of a meter with data that allows staff to greatly reduce the area they may have to search for a "lost" meter should be considered. Palomar Mountain is taking that process one step further by using a survey-grade GNSS receiver while mapping its system in ArcGIS so that future crews can locate meters and related assets with greater accuracy.
A change in metering equipment and technology should not require an operator or staff to abandon things that are working for their system. Palomar Mountain had previously consolidated decades of handwritten records and spreadsheets into a database, eventually moving from Microsoft Access to Azure SQL. Its usage history extends back to 1995. The new metering system was selected and configured to preserve that work rather than displace it.
New usage data is also seamlessly integrated into Palomar's current billing process from the new metering application as well. The current Palomar billing database continues performing the calculations it has always handled, while the connected meters provide more timely and reliable readings. The road map for where data goes from a new app or vendor to existing systems should be proven and tested prior to a large system swap. Reference the meter-as-a-cash-register model mentioned before: the path from the cash register to the bank (or from a bill to a customer) should be clear before committing to a system changeout.
Interval data also changes the way billing questions are handled. With yearly manual readings, a disputed bill often becomes a debate over a single number. With readings recorded throughout the day, staff can show whether consumption occurred continuously, intermittently, or during a specific period. Palomar can now see 15-minute incremental flow data on any connection, allowing them to drill down to when a customer uses water first thing in the morning.
Palomar Mountain previously received several disputed-usage calls each year in addition to legitimate leak inquiries. Staff sometimes photographed meter registers to preserve evidence. A detailed usage history provides a much clearer basis for those uncomfortable customer conversations.
Regularly reporting meters will also allow Palomar to move from annual billing to monthly billing. Under a manual system, increasing billing frequency would mean sending staff into the field more often. With cellular connected meters, the "reading process" happens multiple times a day, instead of once a year, giving them flexibility in generating revenue more often.
Meter accuracy, battery life, communication methods, and warranty terms all matter, but they should not be the only factors considered during a potential meter upgrade project. Water system operators should also look for a partner/vendor that can help them navigate the steps in the process from start to finish, from the source to the bank. A small-scale or partial pilot/demo may be a great way to answer the questions for an operator or manager prior to a full system meter changeout project.
Boards and managers should ask who will help build the road map for an upgrade, configure the software, validate billing data, train operators and office staff, coordinate equipment deliveries, and provide support when problems arise. No water system has the luxury of having a "pause button" when things don't go as planned. Ask questions, contemplate your billing process and all the steps that may be different with a new metering system, and be comfortable and confident with the answers prior to committing to a major project. The answers to those questions may have a long-lasting impact beyond subtle differences in hardware specifications or pricing between vendors.
Many small systems already know they need to replace aging meters but figuring out how to pay for them is a major obstacle. Much like the technology and innovation in metering, there are new methods and programs that can facilitate a system upgrade for operators without draining their bank account or adding tremendous debt. Depending on the project and provider, utilities may be able to use phased deployments, lease financing, subscription-based service models, grants, or other payment structures that spread costs out over time while realizing the benefits in revenue and efficiency that actually pay for the upgrade.
As Palomar Mountain continues its deployment, the benefits of higher quality, more regular data are becoming more and more evident. Continuous usage information helps identify leaks, improves billing confidence, reduces customer disputes, supports regulatory reporting, and provides actual system visibility and information for management and capital planning.
The same visibility that exposes a leak at a single account can also reveal broader water losses and operational issues across the system when similar technology is applied to critical points in a system. "We're going to find out exactly where we're losing water," Renee said. "It's going to let us know. We're not going to be able to deny it anymore."
Modern metering is not simply about collecting more readings, having a metering app, or installing new high-tech equipment. It is about giving operators and managers better information to manage their revenue, infrastructure, staff, equipment, sources, compliance, capital improvement dollars, and customers.
Jason M. Flynt is president and co-founder of Resource Monitor, providers of industry-leading technology designed specifically for the unique challenges of rural water management.
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2026 issue of California Water Journal, the magazine of the California Rural Water Association.
