The City of Moncton is recommending residents self report their water usage if they have one of the approximately 3,000 water meter transmission units failing around the city.
Director of Utilities Nicole Taylor says while the meters are properly measuring consumption the problem is that data isn’t being transmitted back to the city by the meter transmission units (MTUs).
In summer and fall 2017, the city noticed a dramatic increase in the number of failing units with Taylor saying they usually have 80 to 100 offline at any given time, but currently there are 1,500 not reporting, and another 1,500 reporting only sporadically and expected to fail shortly.
The cause is a problem with the battery included in the MTU, and Taylor says in cases where the units aren’t working, bills are being estimated on historical consumption.
“And then once the meter and MTU are replaced there’s an adjustment made to the bill, so this can be quite a number of months following estimation,” says Taylor.
When questioned by City Council at last Monday’s meeting, Taylor acknowledged customers could be on estimated billing for months, or even years.
“So the bills can be off, or need a large adjustment either higher or lower, so this can cause frustration for customers as well as collection issues,” continues Taylor.
She adds while it is not mandatory to self report your water usage if you’re on estimated billing, Taylor highly recommends it.
“So if you’ve got your children home from university, or they just left for university, or you went on an extended vacation, or you filled the pool, you know, anything that’s not representative of your historical consumption, that does not get picked up on an estimated warning,” warned Taylor.
She says customers will now be able to self report their water meter readings, and they have two options.
Taylor says they can take a picture of the meter, and email it to the revenue department, and the bill will be based off the photograph, or customers can fill out a form attached to the letter delivered to affected customers and drop it off at City Hall.
