The Town of Stonewall's updating their water metering system, with new radio frequency-read meters in every home and business in town.

Mayor Lockie McLean says what's in use now isn't acceptable, but acknowledges upgrading carries a cost of $830,000. However, he stresses they have a solution thanks to their CAO, who was able to tap into provincial grant money.

"In the amount of $430,000. And then we also have something called gas tax rebates that we get. So the sum of taking our 2016 gas tax and our 2017 gas tax funds, and then also taking in the $430,000 that they got, is a total of $860,000 that we're having done without touching a penny of taxpayers' dollars."

McLean says the new meters will mean consistently accurate readings.

"There won't be anyone that's under-paying, or over-paying. It means that the town, in terms of the utility fund, will have a very accurate revenue stream, instead of something that right now is very suspect, because in our utility fund, sometimes the numbers just don't add up, and we know they don't add up because of the inaccuracy of the old water meters that we have."

He stresses it'll mean no immediate change in rates.

"No increase, whatsoever. But what we'll do is, once we've had a year of being able to gather the data that we've got, maybe the opposite might happen. Maybe there'll be a decrease, maybe there'll be an increase -- we just don't know at this time. All we know is that the information that we have will be 100% accurate."

McLean says the project's to be completed next year.