There is a long, thin, rubber-y line wrapped around/connected to the water line pictured below.
Other angle:
The piece in question is loosely hanging via a zip tie on my main water line about shoulder height and can be moved up/down easily.
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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What is this thing?
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Yep. My dad used to manage a water utility in the 90s, right around the time that they were experimenting with different means of monitoring flow for billing.
The way they had been doing it for decades was by sending a person to literally, physically open every meter well (using a special wrench that opened the five-sided nut closing the well, in an effort to prevent homeowners from tampering with it) and reading the meter usage visually each month, writing the amount down on a paper sheet that would then be manually entered into a billing program on the computer later.
That was supplanted by a version with a very short range radio transmitter. The reader would tap the cover with a probe, and the probe handle would display the value, which was again written on a paper sheet. This got rid of the need to physically open every well, but as I remember it never actually rolled out to every customer even in the entire company before the next version: a slightly longer range transmitter that the reader could scan without leaving the truck. But again, the value was written on paper and input manually.
My dad changed jobs before they upgraded that one so that it saved the value to internal memory, allowing a reader to just drive past every customer's house and read every meter without stopping. My understanding is that that version was eventually replaced with something more like the one in OP's image, which would transmit the value back to the billing office and generate a bill automatically without needing anyone to even come within range of it or see the number at all.
Though, that said, once I became a homeowner, I've noticed meter readers physically opening the meter well and visually inspecting it. I don't see any way they could possibly be actually recording the number (they don't get nearly close enough), so I have to assume they're using a different method to get the number and just performing visual checks to make sure the meter isn't tampered with.