George Mazurkiewicz has faced bees, ticks, mosquitoes, suspicious homeowners, two-foot high snowdrifts, flood waters, low-hanging branches, deer and an endless parade of barking dogs. Despite the obstacles, little has kept Mazurkiewicz from completing his appointed rounds.

In a wireless age, some things still require old-fashioned people power, like delivering the mail and in New Jersey, reading the electric meter.

Mazurkiewicz, a meter reader for Jersey Central Power & Light, walks in and out of hundreds of backyards, residential developments and businesses each day, taking a few seconds to scan the meter before entering digits into a handheld device and moving on.

A self-described dog lover, the 66-year-old Randolph resident carries JCP&L-issued repellent to fend off aggressive canines but has never used it in his six years on the job. He stays fit by walking up to eight miles a day on his route, and will calm a startled homeowner with a cheerful greeting: “Hello, meter reader!”

Easy going and with a neatly trimmed gray beard, Mazurkiewicz sported wraparound sunglasses and a neon yellow vest over casual clothes during a tour through his route in Summit on a recent sunny afternoon.

“I enjoy this job and I’m accurate, that’s the good thing,” he said. “It’s an accomplishment when I’m done.”

And a necessity in New Jersey, where most electric, gas and water meters still require people to visit the locations and enter updated usage numbers to calculate monthly bills. It is a model that has remained relatively unchanged for more than a century.

The alternative, two-way smart meters, can remotely calculate individual gas, water and electric usage, send a signal when a customer’s power goes out, and in some cases, help cut energy consumption and manage peak demand.

But the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and the state’s ratepayer advocate haven’t supported the technology, whose system-wide installation would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, a cost that would get passed on to customers.

The state Division of Rate Counsel, which represents consumers in utility rate cases, maintains that human meter readers are still cheaper and more effective than their high-tech counterparts.

“Meter readers serve an important function,” said Stefanie Brand, Rate Counsel director. “They are not obsolete.”

Because utilities don’t yet have smart grid technology that would allow for system-wide communication, many of the potential smart meter benefits would go unrealized, she said.

But despite New Jersey’s reluctance, smart meter technology has become increasingly popular. As of last year, there were more than 45 million smart meters installed in the U.S. — most in residential homes — and 24 states had legislation or policies guiding the technology, including Pennsylvania, California and Florida.

Public Service Electric & Gas, the state’s largest utility, and the smaller Atlantic City Electric, offered plans for wide-scale smart meter deployment a few years ago. Both eventually withdrew their proposals after failing to garner support from the BPU.

Rate Counsel opposes system-wide smart meter installation because of the considerable cost to consumers, and a study the office commissioned found little prospect of eventual savings.

"We don't think they're very smart," Brand said of the high-tech units, which cost more than $250 each. "Most of the savings that you do get from these smart meters are in lost jobs from meter readers."



Brand supports smaller-scale — and less costly — replacement of meters that break down with models that have more current technology.

At New Jersey American Water, more than 500,000 of the 650,000 metered accounts can be read using an advanced meter reader that allows employees to remotely pick up the data as they drive by, said Peter Eschbach, a company spokesman. PSE&G has similar technology for parts of its gas system.



But Heidi Swanson, PSE&G's director of field and metering operations, said meter readers remain vital to PSE&G. The company employs 315 meter readers to cover most of its 2.1 million electric customers and 1.8 million gas customers.

After Hurricane Sandy roared through the state, meter readers were redeployed as hazard responders, Swanson said.

“They are also physically the face of the company, and one of the few interactions our company has with the customer,” she said. PSE&G considered switching to smart metering after Sandy left millions of customers without power, many for up to two weeks.

“It never really panned out into anything required,” Swanson said. “The BPU really hasn’t supported the deployment of smart meters.”

Patricia Mullin, who is JCP&L director of operations support, said the company believes its own meter readers are “more economical right now than smart meters.”

Parent company First Energy does have smart meter pilot programs at other company-owned subsidiaries, she said. “I’m not sure I could answer 10 years from now, but we are keeping in touch with the technology as it evolves,” Mullin said.

JCP&L now employs 140 meter readers — including 15 who were hired last month — for its 1.1 million electric customers.

Before he was hired, Mazurkiewicz spent more than 30 years at JPMorgan Chase in support staff. He was laid off in early 2002, then later became a real estate agent. When the housing market collapsed, he asked his own meter reader if JCP&L was hiring.

“This was a life-saver,” Mazurkiewicz said. “I get paid a good salary. If I had to get an equivalent, I’d be working three full-time jobs at Burger King.”

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