AMR Drives Exeter-Merritt Growing Water Network

Located in the state of Illinois, Exeter-Merritt Water Cooperative delivers safe and high-quality drinking water to approximately 300 residents from the county of Scott and Morgan. In 2011, the cooperative decided to do a phase 3 expansion and include additional homes in the rural area resulting in connections increasing from 154 to 325. Exeter and Merritt are small rural towns built on hilly terrains and gravel roads, with most of the meters installed in the countryside.

Though the Exeter-Merritt pipeline stretches to approximately 80 miles long, manual reading took 12 to 16 hours, and occasionally, revisits were needed to verify or correct the reading. If business-as-usual had persisted despite the increase in new connections, manual reading would have become burdensome for the Water Co-op as many of the meters are in hard-to-reach areas. Poor weather and tricky terrain can also quickly lead to unsafe conditions that prevent technicians from getting an accurate read.

In the quest for a more resource-efficient and sustainable solution, Exeter-Merritt Water Cooperative found its ideal solution in Automated Meter Reading (AMR).