By Tabitha Evans Moore
Editor & Publisher
LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Moore County’s water meter saga is now in its third chapter, and patience on the MUD Board is running thin. At Tuesday night’s meeting, representatives from Core & Main and Kamstrup sat before the board to answer for a rollout that has, so far, produced more complications than solutions — and to map a path forward on a $1.4 million investment the community cannot afford to get wrong.
The short version: the new Kamstrup meters are good. The installation of them was problematic.
A Decade of Chasing Water Loss
To understand why this meeting mattered, you have to understand what came before it. For years, Moore County’s utility system has hemorrhaged treated water it never gets paid for. By 2024, average water loss had climbed to roughly 44 percent — meaning nearly half of every gallon the system paid to treat and pump was disappearing before it could be billed. At 25 million gallons a month, that translated to millions of dollars in lost revenue annually.
The first attempted fix was Zenner meters, installed around 2020. They became, in the words of one board member Tuesday night, “the biggest pile of garbage ever known on the face of the earth.” Water loss spiraled. A $765,000 Zenner contract still carries roughly $64,000 in outstanding debt.
In April 2025, the board voted to try again — this time with Kamstrup smart meters, distributed through Nashville-based Core & Main, the exclusive Tennessee provider. The promise was compelling: ultrasonic technology that listens for leaks, real-time usage data transmitted automatically to the billing office, and a hybrid AMI/AMR system to handle the rural dead zones around Charity, Ledford Mill, and Hurdlow where cell and internet signal are sparse. The board approved the project at just over $1.4 million, with hopes the water loss savings would eventually pay for it.
What Went Wrong
By February, it was clear the rollout had problems. Staff reported that approximately 1,600 meters were not transmitting readings automatically, requiring drive-by or manual reads — far more than the roughly 26 meters the board said had been led to expect when they approved the project. The February meeting ended with the board placing Core & Main on the March agenda and demanding they show up in person.
On Tuesday, the full picture came into focus. The core problem was misinstallation. Of the meters placed by the installation contractors, approximately 1,326 were installed incorrectly — AMR drive-by meters placed in AMI automatic-read locations, and vice versa. An additional 335 meters required repair or reprogramming after the fact.
There was also a disconnect between the metering system and the billing software that resulted in some customers receiving zero-dollar bills despite the meters reading correctly. The meter, Core & Main representatives explained, was doing its job — but the data was not completing the handoff to the billing system. In at least one case, one customer went unbilled for 100,000 gallons one month before the error was caught.
What the Board Demanded — and What They Got
Board Chair Posluszny was direct: the reprogramming and repairs that have consumed staff time since installation should have been done correctly the first time, and the board would not accept being billed for work that should have been covered under the original contract. He also pushed back hard on earlier suggestions from staff that a new signal study could take up to a year — a claim Core & Main’s Camstrup representative, Ethan Stanley, flatly contradicted. A new propagation study, Stanley told the board, typically takes three to four weeks, and can be expedited.
“I am glad to hear that,” Posluszny said. “I’m not gonna allow this to happen. We have to stand up for the ratepayers.”
The board directed Core & Main staff to physically ride with MUD technicians to GPS-locate potential repeater sites in problem areas, evaluate whether additional signal infrastructure can bring more meters onto the automatic network, and report back. The goal is to reduce the number of drive-by meters as much as terrain will allow.
Core & Main’s representative committed to ongoing support — riding with staff, reprogramming meters, training office personnel on the billing software, and being available by phone. “I will do whatever it takes to get this to the point where everybody here is comfortable,” he told the board.
Why Your Bill May Have Changed
For ratepayers who have seen their bills increase since the new meters went in, the board offered a direct explanation: the new system catches every drop. Previous meters — particularly the Zenner units — were missing usage. Customers who weren’t being fully billed before are now being billed accurately. As board member Glen Thomas put it, “If it wasn’t reading, you weren’t paying a water bill. You’re not going to complain about that.”
At the same time, some customers received unusually low or zero bills during the transition period due to the connectivity gap between the meters and the billing software. That issue is being worked through as the system is dialed in.
The Kamstrup meters themselves, Core & Main representatives stressed, are not the problem. Every unit is individually flow-tested before installation. The accuracy of the hardware is not in question. What is being resolved is everything around it: where meters were placed, how the signal network is configured, and how data flows from meter to billing system.
Whether the third system delivers what the first two could not remains to be seen. But after years of lost water and lost revenue, the board has made clear it will not wait another month to find out.
The MUD Board meets every second Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. at the MUD offices at 705 Fayetteville Highway. All meetings are open to the public.•
About The Lynchburg Times: The Lynchburg Times covers Moore County School Board meetings as part of its commitment to community accountability journalism. This work is support by our community partners at Barrel House Barbecue.