TYLER, Texas — People may have noticed some maintenance crews going around Tyler neighborhoods over the last few days.
That's because the city of Tyler is continuing work on replacing water meters at homes that are malfunctioning and causing a bad read on water consumption.
“I’m hoping it to be 'even stevens', maybe a few dollars, one way or the other," homeowner Phil Sharman said. "As long as it's not a big, drastic jump, I don't have a problem with it."
A total of 11,000 meters scattered throughout the Rose City are being replaced and the project is expected to take more than a year.
“This project has been on our radar for a few years,” said Jacob Yanker, project engineer for Tyler Water Utilities. “You're naturally going to have some turnover in cycle life on any kind of infrastructure, but especially meters that have water moving through them daily.”
The work is expected to take no more than 30 minutes and is a relatively an in-and-out job.
Yanker said this change is to ensure accurate water measurement reads.
“They're going to be billed accurately for the amount of water that they use in a given month,” Yanker said. “They're going to be getting a new meter that's going to be, that's going to be good for 15 to 20 years.”
Yanker said this will be a benefit for more accurate readings, but customers have their own doubts whether or not this will actually be beneficial to them.
“I don't think that changing everything to the new, modern digital technology is always the best,” homeowner David Cauklin said. “That just gives them another screen to hide behind when you go to question the validity of your bill."
Despite concerns, the city doesn’t expect bills to increase dramatically, but it can vary depending on each household’s usage.
“The most important thing is that the water bill could increase, it could also decrease," Yanker said. "It could stay the same. It really depends on the consumption that that specific customer has."
Homeowners know this project is out of their control and just hope for minimal increases in their bill.