Telemetry to be updated

The telemetry program that Moorcroft's Public Works Department uses to monitor and manage the five active wells on which the town depends for water has become outdated and no longer works effectively, necessitating repeated troubleshooting to mitigate problems within the system.

According to department director Cory Allison, "It's slow...and getting glitches."

When Moorcroft residents run water in their homes, these five wells including the Maddison and four smaller wells work inconspicuously throughout town, along rights-of-way. Allison explains the importance of keeping the program up to date:

"Telemetry is the computer system that runs all the wells in town. We can turn it on, turn it off; it tells us when the well goes down or when we're out of water in the tanks, it pretty much reads everything about our town wells."

At last week's meeting of the council, a bill showed the cost of troubleshooting the overwhelmed out of date system and Councilman Dale Petersen later said of this problem, "We've been having some issues with the telemetry system so we're going to see if there's something else we can do address that."

Allison is on top of the situation, "I budgeted for it, we were planning on having to upgrade some stuff this year so it's in our budget, we just held off as long as we could on it, but now we're getting to where we need to have it."

The director is waiting for bids on replacing software and possibly a few pieces of hardware, "We won't have to replace it all. I don't have all the bids yet, but we're talking $2000-$3000, probably...We won't have to change anything out at the well sites, but we may have to change out our master computer, but I don't know on that yet."

He anticipates conducting this project around the beginning of 2024.