BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 7, 2025--
Metron, the global leader in cellular-based smart metering and water intelligence, today announced the launch of WaterScope® PLUS, an intuitive new business intelligence dashboard that brings the full power of advanced water analytics within reach for utility providers, real-estate firms, and other commercial and industrial organizations.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250407337164/en/
“Using Metron’s industry-leading smart meters, businesses are already collecting incredibly rich minute-by-minute water data. Now, WaterScope PLUS empowers them to use that data to drive action,” says Dr. Ellie Graeden, Metron’s chief data and product officer. “Using an easily interpretable software solution such as WaterScope PLUS, users can rapidly identify and prioritize problems, identify opportunities to cut costs and boost revenues, communicate effectively with their customers, and capture powerful new efficiencies across their operations.”
WaterScope PLUS draws data from a company’s entire array of smart meters and water sensors into a web-based digital dashboard offering at-a-glance access to the targeted metrics needed to manage water use and reduce operating costs. WaterScope PLUS provides a range of powerful data tools, including tracking monthly water consumption, monitoring water expenses passed on to tenants, or generating instant alerts for properties with active leaks.
Users can also access powerful machine learning insights gleaned from Metron’s massive network of smart meters. By analyzing the half billion data points we collect every day, WaterScope PLUS rapidly detects and flags leaks and other changes in customer water usage—and provides accurate estimates of how much any water loss is costing the company or its tenants, enabling teams to more efficiently prioritize key maintenance tasks.
Teams can also use WaterScope PLUS to monitor water consumption and cost trends for their company and their industry as a whole, and easily compare key KPIs—including water use, maintenance efficacy, and operational costs—to those of industry peers. Business leaders can zoom out to explore trends across a property portfolio or geographic region, or zoom in to check water usage, identify leaks, and surface new water- and money-saving opportunities for specific properties or individual residential or commercial units.
“With WaterScope PLUS, we’re connecting the dots between smart meters and business operations and helping organizations of all kinds—from utilities to real-estate managers—make smarter decisions that drive real bottom-line benefits,” Dr. Graeden says. “Water intelligence has always been a powerful source of business insights, and now Metron is providing the enhanced analysis and tools leaders need to apply those insights across their organizations.”
About Metron
Metron is the world’s leading smart water management system and water sustainability company providing customers with best-in-class, real-time water use data analytics. Metron creates industry-leading customer solutions combining durable, high-performance meters and sensors with WaterScope PLUS ® Advanced Water Data Software. Over 1 billion gallons of water has been saved by Metron’s smart water system’s resource usage optimization, enhanced efficiency, and informed decision making. With a massive network of installed network devices, Metron propels property water management and sustainability – detecting leaks and abnormal consumption from the utility meter and across a broad range of water users within a complex. Metron serves the Utilities, Municipalities, Manufactured Housing, Multi-Family Housing, Education, Residential and Commercial Real Estate verticals in all 50 states and in Canada.
Learn more: metron-us.com.
WaterScope PLUS makes it easy to identify water issues for mobile home parks, multi-family housing complexes and water utilities. (Photo: Metron/Shutterstock)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand lawmakers dealt an overwhelming defeat Thursday to a controversial proposed law seeking to redefine the country’s founding treaty between Māori tribes and the British Crown.
The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi bill was rejected by Parliament in a 112 to 11 vote in Wellington, halting its progress to a third and final vote. Cheers and applause erupted before lawmakers and the public sang a waiata — a traditional Māori song — after the result was announced.
The sweeping reinterpretation of the 1840 treaty signed by British representatives and 500 Māori chiefs during New Zealand’s colonization was never expected to become law. But the measures provoked a fraught debate about Indigenous rights and last November prompted the biggest race relations protest in the country’s history.
But its defeat did not spell the end for scrutiny of Māori rights in New Zealand law.
The Treaty guides the relationship between the government and Māori, with its meaning established through decades of legislation and court rulings. It promised tribes broad rights to retain their lands and protect their interests in return for ceding governance to the British.
But two versions of the document were signed – one in English and one in Māori — and while both promised Māori the rights and privileges of British citizens, the documents differed on what authority the chiefs were ceding. Crown breaches of both created steep disenfranchisement for Māori, who still face stark inequities.
Since an Indigenous protest movement surged in the 1970s, Treaty considerations have been a growing part of New Zealand law. Redress efforts have bolstered a dwindling Māori language and culture — now experiencing a resurgence — and resulted in billion-dollar settlements for stolen Māori land.
The bill sought to end the 185-year conversation about the Treaty’s meaning by enacting in law particular definitions for each clause and specifying that any rights should apply to all New Zealanders. Its author -- libertarian lawmaker David Seymour, who is Māori – has decried what he said were special rights and privileges on the basis of race.
In his speech to lawmakers Thursday, Seymour said New Zealanders should all have "the same rights and duties.”
He urged lawmakers outside his party to break ranks and endorse the bill. None did.
Parliamentary opposition leader Chris Hipkins lambasted the bill as “a stain on this country” and accused its supporters of spreading “the myth of Māori special privilege.” He cited the disadvantage of Māori on almost every metric — including higher rates of poverty and ill-health and lower life expectancy.
The Treaty of Waitangi “is not about racial privilege or racial superiority,” said opposition lawmaker Willie Jackson. “It is and always has been about legal rights Māori have in their contract with the Crown.”
Parliament received 300,000 written submissions from members of the public — more than a proposed law had ever received before — 90% of them opposed to the measures.
“This bill has been absolutely annihilated,” said Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, an opposition lawmaker from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori political party.
Maipi-Clarke faces disciplinary proceedings at Parliament for her protest of the bill’s first vote last November, when she tore up a copy of the measures while performing a haka — a Māori chant of challenge — as she and colleagues walked towards Seymour. The lawmakers refused to attend a hearing on their conduct this month, because they said Parliament does not respect tikanga — Māori cultural protocols.
Despite its unpopularity, the proposed law passed its first vote due to a quirk of New Zealand’s political system that allows tiny parties to negotiate outsized influence for their agendas.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon agreed his lawmakers would endorse the bill at its first reading to fulfil a political deal with Seymour that handed Luxon power. Without enough seats to govern after the 2023 election, Luxon negotiated support from two minor parties, including Seymour's, in return for political concessions.
They included Luxon's early support for the Treaty Principles bill, although the New Zealand leader always said he would later oppose it. Luxon's opponents on Thursday derided his political dealings.
The Treaty Principles Bill was not the only measure Luxon agreed to that will scrutinize the Treaty’s influence on New Zealand law and policy. Another of Seymour's initiatives, already enacted, directed public agencies to stop targeting policies to specifically redress Māori inequities.
Luxon also agreed to consider and either replace or repeal mentions of the Treaty of Waitangi throughout most New Zealand laws.
A student opposing the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill sits outside New Zealand's Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, Thursday, April 10, 2025.(AP Photo/ Charlotte Graham-McLay)
