Drive-by radio
A worker drives the route with a receiver. You upload the file that the vendor’s software saves.
Software for Utah water
Every share, every turn, every gallon. On the record.
One record for a Utah mutual water or irrigation company: the share ledger, the water turns, the assessments and the meter bills. The annual water-use report to the state comes from the same records, so nobody types the numbers twice.
40°46′10″N 111°53′29″W Salt Lake Base & Meridian
Sec. 01 · The law
Utah requires a meter on every pressurized secondary connection by 2030.
A meter only helps if somebody turns its readings into bills, usage statements and the annual report to the state. That is office work, and it is the work our software does.
3Years
3Months
9Days
1,196Days in all, to 1 Jan 2030
Every 31 March, starting now
A report to the Division of Water Rights: metered use by user class, the meter count, the service boundary, connections by class, the total water received, and the dates of service.
73-10-34(3)1 January 2030: meters
A meter on each user of pressurized secondary water. Culinary water, and water on land under the Farmland Assessment Act, is not secondary water.
73-10-34(1)(i), (2)(b)1 April 2030: show people their use
An educational part on a monthly statement, or a portal that shows each user their use more often than monthly.
73-10-34(14)(d)1 July 2030: tiered billing
Bills by a tiered conservation rate. A user who grows food, such as a garden, fruit trees or pasture, pays the lowest tier.
73-10-34(14)(b), (14)(f)(ii)Who is in, and who can get out
- No exemption for size. A “small secondary water retail supplier” (5,000 connections or fewer, or a city or town) is a grant category, not an exemption. (1)(l), (5)
- Meter at strategic points instead, with the state engineer’s approval, if the system relies mainly on stream flow with little storage; or most users are agricultural and residential users take less than half the water; or it mixes pipes and open ditches with 1,000 users or fewer in a critical area (2,500 or fewer elsewhere). (13)
- Exemptions, each with conditions: some fifth- and sixth-class counties where meters cost more than a quarter of the budget; places where no manufacturer will warranty a meter; and critical groundwater management areas. (9), (10), (11)
- No tiered billing required for a supplier that is exempt, or that meters at strategic points. (14)(f)(i)
What happens after a missed date
- No state money “for water related purposes”: from 1 January 2030 until the supplier is fully metered, and from 1 April 2030 for breaking the billing rules. (7)(a), (14)(g)
- Fines through an enforcement process, not a bill. The Division director refers a supplier when enforcement is needed to protect a water resource. The state engineer then issues a notice of violation. The supplier has a right to a hearing, and a final order sets the fine. (8)
- The metering fine is $10 for each unmetered connection in 2030, rising $10 a year to $50 in 2034. The billing fine can reach the metering money the supplier has received from the state. (8)(j), (14)(g)(xiii)
Checked against Utah Code 73-10-34 as amended in the 2026 General Session, on 23 September 2026. This is a summary, not legal advice. Read the current statute, and ask the Division of Water Resources how it applies to your system. Every supplier also owed the Division a metering plan by 31 December 2025 (2)(e).
Sec. 02 · The question to ask first
Why not have the city bill for us?
You can. Under the statute, the city’s public water system must bill your users for you on request, at your tiered rate, if you send the usage data in a file its billing system reads. The city can charge your users for the cost. 73-10-34(14)(c), (14)(e)
What the city will not do
Keep your certificate book. Record a transfer. Bill the annual assessment by share. Run the water turns. Build the 31 March report. That is most of a mutual company’s office work, and it is what we build first. If the city bills your meters, you still need the rest.
Sec. 03 · The ledger
Ledger & billing
For the secretary who keeps the certificate book, the board that sets the rates, and the ditch rider who opens the headgates. One record for all three.
-
01
Share ledger and transfers
Every certificate, every owner, every transfer. Old certificate numbers stay as they were.
-
02
Assessments and payments
Annual assessments by share, invoices, payments applied to the oldest bill first, and a clear statement of account.
-
03
Water turns
Build the rotation, let shareholders ask to swap turns, and send each one a notice before the water comes.
-
04
Meter billing
Import the readings, bill by tier, and flag a leak or a meter that reads zero before the bill goes out.
-
05
The state report and the board packet
The annual water-use figures and the monthly board packet come from the same records. Nobody retypes them.
- Working today
- In our pilot build: the certificate ledger, transfer requests, assessments and invoices, recorded payments, and the turn schedule.
- Being built
- Transfer approval with the signed document on file, the ditch rider’s phone app, meter billing by tier, and the 31 March report, in that order, before March 2027.
- Moving your records in
- We key in your certificate book with you, with every certificate number as it is, and check the share total against yours. Shareholder names and opening balances come from your Excel or QuickBooks lists.
- QuickBooks and payments
- It works beside QuickBooks, not in place of it. It keeps shareholders, certificates, assessments and payments; your general ledger stays in QuickBooks. It records the checks, cash and bank payments you receive. Online payment by card or bank comes later.
Statement of account
Cert. 0418 · 12.5 shares
| Item | Status | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 assessment | Paid | $312.50 |
| July meter bill, tier 2 | Paid | $48.20 |
| August meter bill, tier 3 | Due 30 Sep | $71.65 |
| Balance | $71.65 | |
North lateral · turn schedule
Week of 21 Sep
MTWTFSS
Cert. 0112
Cert. 0418
Cert. 0277
Cert. 0530
Cert. 0391
Water use · last 7 days
Cert. 0418 · gallons
1,842
gal yesterday
Measured
Estimated
Review
Sample data. Not a real company.
Sec. 04 · Meter readings
No camera on every meter.
Our software does not read meters. It takes the readings your meters already produce, checks them, and bills them. How they arrive depends on the meters you installed.
Fixed network
Readings go to the meter vendor’s system every day. You download its export file and upload it to us.
Walk the route
For a meter with no radio, the ditch rider types each read into a phone. The app we are building works with no signal and sends when it can.
What we can read today. Our first import reads a plain spreadsheet (CSV) with the meter number, the date and the reading. We have not yet read a Badger, Sensus, Neptune, Itron or Master Meter export. We build each vendor’s format from a pilot company’s real file, and we tell you plainly if we cannot read yours yet.
The first question we ask
“When your installer finished, what did they hand you to get the readings out: a truck receiver, a login to a web portal, or nothing?”
Sec. 05 · Who pays for it
State money pays for meters. It rarely pays for this software.
We do not promise that a loan or a grant will pay for software. Most mutual companies should plan to pay for it themselves, so we price it to fit a small company’s budget. Here is what the two state programs say, and who they leave out.
Secondary water meter loan
Board of Water Resources · 1 percent interest · 15 percent cost share
“The loan will include funds for the meter itself, installation and equipment costs, meter-reading technology, the cost of databases and billing or reporting software. It will not include costs tied to ongoing reading of the meters, additional staffing, etc.” Secondary Water Meter Funding Guidelines, item 5
Open
Software counts only as a one-time cost inside a project that installs new meters,
not repairs or replacements. The system must be pressurized and serve mainly residential,
lawn and garden use. The applicant prepares a water conservation plan, and the Board also
asks for an ordinance that bans residential watering from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; ask the
Division how a mutual company meets that. A company that has already metered, or that
is mostly open ditch, is probably outside this loan.
Transparent Water Billing Grant
Division of Water Resources · 50 percent cost share
“These one-time funds are available to retail water providers within the state of Utah that have a current water conservation plan filed with the Utah Division of Water Resources.” Conserve Water Utah
Closed
The last window ran 16 March to 15 May 2026, and the next one is not published. It is
for retail water providers with a conservation plan already on file. A mutual company
that delivers only irrigation water is probably not the intended recipient.
One date to check now: if your company already has an approved metering grant project, the Division needs final reimbursement requests by 31 October 2026. Ask the Division before you rely on any program.
Sec. 06 · Who is behind this
Caleb Mason, in Utah.
Base & Meridian is Caleb Mason, a software engineer who builds it and answers for it. Write to him directly at hello@baseandmeridian.com. We have no customers yet. The first pilot companies will be our references.
Your records stay yours
- You own them. The certificate book, the ledger and the payments belong to your company, not to us.
- You can take them at any time: a full export of certificates, transfers, shareholders, invoices and payments, as spreadsheet files and PDF statements.
- If we stop, you get 90 days’ notice and the full export.
- Every change is logged: who changed what, and when. A certificate is never deleted and never rewritten; a transfer cancels it and issues new ones.
The pilot year
- It costs nothing. No card, no contract to renew.
- We move your records in with you, and you keep your binder and spreadsheets running beside it until you trust it.
- Before the year ends, we agree a price for the second year with you. If it does not suit your board, you leave with the full export.
Sec. 07 · Pilot companies
We are looking for our first Utah companies.
If you keep the books for a mutual water or irrigation company, we would like to hear how you do it today. A call takes twenty minutes. The pilot year costs nothing.
Sec. 08 · The name
The point that everything else is measured from.
In Salt Lake City stands the Salt Lake Base and Meridian: the survey origin point for the public land surveys of Utah, established in 1855.
Property lines and water rights across most of the state are still written from that one point. We chose the name because our work is the same kind of work: records that stay correct, and that everyone can measure from.
“Township 2 South, Range 1 East, Salt Lake Base and Meridian.”
The form a legal description takes. An example, not a real parcel.