Colorado Water District Begins MOSAIC AMR Deployment to Solve Conservation and Billing...

Colorado Water District Begins MOSAIC AMR Deployment to Solve Conservation and Billing Challenges

PLANO, Texas--(Business Wire)--
Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District in Pagosa Springs,
Colo., has commenced its project to install Datamatic's advanced
MOSAIC Automated Meter Reading system throughout its service
territory. Datamatic has been a leading utility technology partner
since 1980 and supports 500 customers worldwide.

Set high in the San Juan Mountains, 300 miles southwest of Denver,
PAWSD's service territory encompasses over 76 square miles and
receives more than 100 inches of snow each year. This makes accessing
the water meter nearly impossible and has made it necessary for PAWSD
to estimate bills for its 4,800 residential water customers nearly
half the year.

According to Customer Service Manager Lisa Dermody, "We've never
been able to read our residential meters during the winter. So every
spring, we've had five months of estimated billings to reconcile
against that first reading we take in April. This means there are
hundreds of bills to adjust, credits to issue and customer calls to
handle. But MOSAIC will allow us to bill from actual usage, year-round
and thus eliminate that entire 'catch-up period' and the additional
time spent by staff dealing with the issues caused by estimating
customer bills.

"Spring is also when we start finding all of the leaks that have
started over the winter. We're in an area prone to droughts, so we're
extremely conservation-conscious. We've never been comfortable with
the fact that leaks could go on for months before we'd know about
them. Treated water gets wasted and customers have to pay for it. But
our MOSAIC system will notify us of leaks quickly. We're really
excited about that. It's good for the environment and good for our
customers."

MOSAIC is a "mesh" network. This means that all FIREFLY Meter
Interface Units (FF) also function as repeaters for the transmissions
of other neighboring FFs. Data is transmitted, or "hopped," from FF to
FF toward a gateway, similar to the way someone might jump from rock
to rock to cross a river. Transmissions follow any path necessary to
efficiently navigate the network; circumventing environmental
obstacles along the way. The network "self-heals" and dynamically
routes data via an alternate path is any path becomes unavailable.

"MOSAIC's self-healing mesh capabilities was key to our decision,"
added Dermody. "It's ideal for our service territory. We have
mountains, dense forests and heavy snow. Getting line-of-sight between
all of our meters and one or more towers was going to be difficult,
and very expensive. Thankfully, MOSAIC doesn't require that. The
FIREFLYs use each other to hop around obstacles."

"All utilities face challenges unique to their geography and
climate," said Rich Sanders, Datamatic Vice President of Business
Development. "We're thrilled to partner with PAWSD and that MOSAIC is
such a decisive solution to their long-standing billing, conservation
and deployment challenges."

PAWSD's system installation is expected to be completed by October
2008.

"Using a conservative Return on Investment model, we expect the
system to pay for itself in less than three years and to give us
positive cash flow of $5-6 million over the life of the system,"
Dermody concluded. "From an economic standpoint, it's an excellent
decision for us. We're also investigating the possibility of
implementing MOSAIC's Permalog Acoustic Leak Detection and Remote
Shutoff Valve capabilities in the future."

Utilities interested in Datamatic's AMR solutions should contact
Rich Sanders at (972) 234-5000.

About Datamatic, Ltd.

Datamatic is a leader in utility data collection solutions. The
company's innovative ideas virtually created an industry when it
installed the first electronic meter reading system in 1980. For
nearly a quarter of a century, Datamatic has been at the forefront in
the design, implementation and support of advanced utility meter
reading and field data collection solutions for water, gas and
electric utilities. Additional information about Datamatic is
available by calling Scott Black at (214) 520-3430 or on the Web at
www.datamatic.com.

TimePiece PR
Scott Black, 214-520-3430 x303
sblack@timepiecepr.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008