WiFi Project: Nightmare Continues
July 7: A resident from Hollywood Hills adds an important point about the potential for injury and liability:
"The other more important issue with the floating covers is the legal issue when someone gets injured from an open hole as in the ones behind my building at the Hollywood Hills post office. When it is raining people park their cars and run across the parking lot unaware that there are meters with no lids on them. When they are flooded you cannot see there is a 1 foot deep hole that could be stepped in causing severe injury to someones leg."
July 6: When the alleys flood, as they did yesterday in the heavy rain, not only do trash/recycling cans upend, but now some of the new wifi-ready water meter lids pop up or float away -- a more serious problem.
 |
Typical Flooded Alley the Morning After (July 6, 2010) |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Meter Lid Photos Taken by Hollywood resident Christian Mulack on July 6, 2010 |
|
As we have reported earlier , the citywide wifi project is greatly troubled, with none of its components working yet. By November 2009, we were supposed to have had all water meters and parking meters read by wifi, all police laptops operating with wifi, and all Hollywood residents with free wifi internet access. This shift to wifi was said to save the city millions of dollars.
In order to bring the water meters onto the wifi network, the old cement meter box covers were to be replaced with new lids. It appears that some of the new lids have been retrofitted to avoid the problem illustrated above, others obviously have not been. Households lucky enough to still have the old cement lids experienced no pop-up/floating problem when their alleys flooded yesterday.
Short answer here: something needs to be done to secure water meter lids in alleys prone to flooding.
