Tulsa's Water Meter Upgrade: 10,900 Replaced, 134,000 Left To Go

A City of Tulsa contractor has replaced 10,900 water meters but still has 134,000 to go.

The City is updating to electronic water meters with remote reading capability, as part of a project to inspect service lines on both the customer and City side of the meters to check for lead. So far, no lead lines have been found, but 190 lead connectors have, and all were replaced. The majority of them were in the older Kendall Whittier and Florence Park neighborhoods.

The contractor handling the multi-year project has 40 employees and is trying to hire 10 more to speed up the work.

“We're trying to get everybody up to speed with the meters,” said Supervisor Herbert Wealot.

The process of digging up the meter and can, inspecting the lines, replacing the meter and burying the new can and replacing the sod can take an hour, but the water is off at each home for just minutes during the meter changeout.

The City has about 145,000 water meters and no record of any lead service lines. The replacement and inspection process will make sure.

Melissa Gray, the Water System Operations Manager for the City, said “Tulsa is very fortunate that we don't think we've ever used lead service lines in our system. That's why we're going through this process, taking advantage of that meter change out to look at that service line material to make sure our system is free of lead.”

A map of where work has been and will happen can be found here.