Water Meters: Truth or Dare? Some food for Thought

By Delores Broten, editor Watershed Sentinel and member of the Comox Valley Water Watch Coaltion

Water meters are widely touted as being the first line of defence in water conservation, but on examination, many questions arise. Do people really change their water habits because of the meters? Is it fair to expect the poor to pay for water at the same rates as the rich? If a city has water meters, who reads the meters, and how are they read? Just how much will all those meters cost? Is there anything else we could be doing with our water money? Given the propensity for water works and meter contracts to erupt in civic scandal across the continent, from New York to Sacramento, it behooves us to get answers to these questions before the contracts are signed.

Some of these questions are pretty darn hard to find answers to. Nonetheless, water metering is only "on hold" for Courtenay and Comox, but to question the rationale for meters is to commit eco-heresy. In California, all new connections have been metered since 1992, with complete metering required by 2025. Even in Montreal, where a vigorous citizen's resistance claimed that 40% of all the water was being wasted and leaked in municipal connections, the meters are now being installed. In the Comox Valley, the need for meters has been featured in report after report since 1999.

So you would think that if meters are universally accepted, the research which shows their impact on conservation would be easy to find. Not so.

Yes, Environment Canada publishes charts which show a correlation between meters and lower water consumption. Based on those figures, Ken Sharratt concluded in 2001 that, in Canada in the 1990s, average water use per capita per day without water meters was 408 litres, and in metered areas was 268 litres, a 34% difference. The numbers are compelling. There are some strange outliers though. PEI's unmetered households use 185 litres per capita per day, while the metered houses of the Yukon use almost the same amount - 173 litres. In BC, the difference in consumption between metered and non-metered households was less than 5%, coming in at 441 to 442 litres per person per day. Meanwhile, for Courtenay and Comox, consumption is pegged at a puzzling 650 litres per person.

Inevitably the water meter issue is framed by pointing out what water gluttons the local inhabitants are. Change the names and places, and this little dialogue from California could be about the Comox Valley: "There have been studies that show that water use goes down when meters are implemented," said Don Smith, Folsom (California) water management coordinator. "In metered places like Las Vegas, the average house uses 307 gallons a day." By comparison, he said that the average house in Folsom uses 875 gallons of water per day. "(With meters) people will be able to see what they're using, and without a meter, people have no way of knowing what they're using," Smith said.

The other big impact from water metering is that people, and especially systems, find leaks. That was certainly true for Union Bay, where water consumption plummeted by 115% to 331 litres per person after metering. (Per capita usage in 2008 seems to be slowly creeping back up.) It is also important to note that there are huge technical websites devoted to methods of finding leaks without putting your citizens through water meter trauma.

According to the latest Comox Valley report on water metering by Koers and Associates, meters, with aggressive water rate increases with consumption, would reduce water use by 20%, with most of that reduction from leak detection and changes in irrigation use. Lowering water demand would allow the system to postpone upgrades, thus saving over $4 million in financing over the next 20 years.

Some essential tables are missing from the online version of this report, but it appears the meters would cost about $18 million, about $8 a month on the water bills, over 20 years. After 20 years they will have to be replaced.

Growth

The projections blithely ignore known Valley growth proposals such as Kensington with no apparent water source, Trilogy in Cumberland with connections on an already stressed system and Sage Hills, proposing to add another 10 or 20 thousand thirsty people. All of the above undoubtedly in the end will require hook ups to the regional system no matter what the current public relations "plans" (aka "zoning applications") say. In light of those needy developments, the regional board decision to postpone until 2019 the deep water intake which would allow growth while increasing the safety of the system is extremely puzzling. Unfortunately without adequate (if any) public oversight of the four committees which make up water governance for the CVRD, these decisions will remain inexplicable.

It is worth noting that research from the UBC Program on Water Governance indicates that the three most important issues to address for water conservation are: (1) lack of public accountability, (2) neglect of fairness and equity issues, and (3) lack of co-ordination among different levels of government.

Realism

Those water reduction figures are only considered to hold for the first two years of metering, unless there is a deep and consistent public education campaign, accompanied by bylaws, to change people's behaviour. But of that $18 million projected cost, only $200,000 is allocated to public education over 20 years. You can't do much for that. For comparison, consider that the ONE public open house this June 11th has $20,000 allocated to it.

Alternative numbers

It seems that water meters are inevitably coming to the Comox Valley, and it seems that they will indeed lead to water conservation. But it is a rather blunt weapon in the water wars, one that is not particularly socially equitable. After all, those with a water-rich life style - huge lawns and hot tubs - can well afford the bigger bills, while the single mother supporting 3 kids will have to scratch even deeper into their food budget. The meters are also, of course, a perfect set up for an on-going expense with private contractors. But if we don't spend $18 million plus on water meters in the next 20 years, what could we do for water conservation?

To start with, we could institute municipal leak detection and repair program. We could do some continuous in-your-face water conservation education, complete with contests, prizes, give-aways, and endless information.
Then we could spend up to $1000 per household to retrofit our old housing stock. The town of Courtenay has fitted all its municipal buildings with low flush toilets, but that seems to omit community and rec centres, not to mention schools. A low flush toilet reduces water usage by half, and toilet flushing is 29% of all domestic water use - Voila! A guaranteed 15% water savings!

We could hire a student to issue tickets to all those people with green lawns in the depth of summer drought, instead of depending on neighbours to turn each other in. Cost? Actually, that one should pay for itself, at least until people learn. We could further encourage people to keep their lawns brown by gifting those who do with drought resistant plants every fall - cheap and effective because everyone appreciates a present which says "Thank you." We could get the cities to institute more xeroscaping themselves and require that developers plant native trees and shrubs adapted to the water cycles of the west coast of British Columbia instead of tricking out all the houses to look like Anywhere USA.

Sharrat discusses the dramatic results shown by metering and states that no voluntary program could meet a 34% conservation target; strict bylaws and aggressive enforcement would be required.

People are often told that the metering campaign is required before the CVRD can get access to infrastructure funds for the deep water intake, and it is true that a requirement of such funding is some kind of water conservation program. Meters are not dictated. All we have to do is show a real water conservation strategy and its results.

Cited: Ken Sharratt, The Influence of Water Meters on Residential Water Use in Canada, June 2001.