But some residents get soaked
by Karen Maserjian Shan
At first, Bennett Gray was pleased to find out her old water meter was being replaced with a new one.
“I got the postcard in the mail that just said, ‘We’re coming around installing new water meters,’ and I thought, ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ “ said the City of Beacon resident.
After the new meter was installed, however, she received a water bill for $140 – three times the usual $48 amount for each billing quarter. She called the city offices for an explanation.
“All I heard from the city was, it (the water bill) was estimated before and now it’s an actual reading,” Gray said.
But Gray’s bill wasn’t her usual quarterly fee. It was for back charges for past water usage that was unaccounted for in the estimated billings.
“I didn’t like that I wasn’t told what was going to happen,” Gray said.
She’s not the only one.
Donald Caetano has lived in his home in Beacon for more than 18 years. Normally, he’s billed $60 to $70 each quarter for water used by his family of five, per his home’s exterior meter-reading device. But after his new water meter was installed he received a water bill for $382. Unbeknownst to him, he later discovered, his home’s exterior reader was not recording all the water his family was using. The new water bill covered past water usage.
What bothers Caetano, he said, is that the city’s administrators didn’t alert residents to the problem with the exterior readers and let them know that they were going to be billed for previously undetected water usage.
“They (city residents) weren’t given an option stating that, listen, there’s a problem on your exterior meter and…even though we’re billing you, you are probably using more water than we think you’re using,” Caetano said.
“My personal feeling is the City of Beacon should absorb this (cost) because it was their fault to begin with,” Caetano said. “If they don’t want to absorb it, they should pursue the people that manufactured the outside readers that they hired and contracted to put in and they should be liable.”
James McCullum, the water superintendent for the City of Beacon, said all water meters used by commercial businesses and residences in Beacon are being replaced with new units. Perhaps 95 percent of the city’s 4,400 residential and commercial water meters are residential units, McCullum said, with most of them installed in the late 1970s or so.
“We found that a lot of the outside readers were reading slowly—less than the inside,” McCullum said. Apparently, time had taken its toll on some of the units.
“Over time the older meters aren’t as accurate,” McCullum said. “They start reading slower.”
And when that happens the city doesn’t get the revenue that it should, he said. With that, residents were advised to check the figures on their indoor and outdoor meters to avoid surprises in their water bills, McCullum said, and the water department began researching new options for water meters, including investigating various manufacturers and taking with other municipalities.
City administrator, Joe Braun, said, initially, the city’s meter readers had to go into homes and businesses to read water usage figures from the facilities’ water meters. Later, outdoor readers were linked by a wire to the inside meters, allowing meter-readers to get their data on water usage without having to go inside homes or businesses. Later still, he said, touch-read devices were introduced, in which a meter-reader could touch an outdoor reader with a special wand to automatically record and send the reader’s figures to another electronic device. Braun said the city’s policy is not to use estimated figures for water usage.
Then, about three years ago, McCullum’s department noticed a discrepancy between the water usage figures recorded by the indoor and outdoor units. It was discovered that in time because the outdoor readers are exposed to the elements, gears in the readers’ stick, slowing their functionality. Instead of recording the same amount of water usage that was tallied by the indoor meters, some of the outside units registered less. Compounding the problem was the fact that the outside readers’ didn’t shut down completely—which would have been noticed and repaired by the city’s water department—rather, some of the devices became stuck intermittently, a less noticeable problem because they registered somewhat lower amounts of water usage than actually was being used.
City officials decided to go with the best water meters they could find, a state-of-the-art radio-read design made by Sensus Metering Systems (www.sensus.com) based in Raleigh, North Carolina. In an effort to speed the process along, the job has been contracted out to In Line Services Inc. of Flemington, New Jersey, who began installing the new meters this past July. While the job was expected to take about six months, manufacturing delays have slowed the company’s progress. To date, In Line Services has replaced some 1,900 units, McCullum said.
The new water meters can be read via radio waves, so that a meter reader can drive through a neighborhood with a reader device in hand, direct it to a residence or office and send a signal to the building’s water meter to have the meter’s current reading sent back to the hand-held device.
With the old meters it would take two of McCullum’s people two months or more to read all the water meters each billing quarter. With the new meters it only takes one man a couple of days to complete the task. Plus, because the new high-tech radio-read water meters have only one indoor unit, there’s no danger of getting two different readings from two separate devices.
“The radio-read devices inquire directly of the meter itself,” Braun said. “And if they can’t read the meter itself electronically, they give an error message, so there’s no chance that we have this kind of insidious problem where we’re getting a reading which appears to be correct, because it’s not that much off, but isn’t.”
Although it will cost the city more than one million dollars to replace its 4,400 water meters, Braun said the new devices allow for accurate quarterly billings and, because just one meter-reader will be needed to read the meters each quarter, the city will save money.
City officials anticipated some of the new readings would be different from the old ones, Braun said, although they didn’t know how large the differences would be. Braun was unsure whether residents were made aware that their water bills could increase with the installation of the new meters.
“If we have a large read, we double-check the meter and we offer the opportunity for the customer to actually see the meter that was removed,” Braun said. “We are going through and double-checking every reading to make certain they’re correct and there are no errors.”
Braun did not know the average adjustment figures, but said so far, 50 or so have been over $600. Residents who meet certain criteria may be eligible to pay for the adjusted water bills over a period of time. Of the group of meters that have been replaced so far, Braun said probably 100 were affected by the under-reading of the external reading device.
“The devices that we have out there accumulate, so it could have been something that happened a year ago that the external reading devices got stuck or it could have happened two or three or four or five or ten years ago – we don’t know for sure,” Braun said. He said there currently is no statute of limitations for payment of differences between mis-reported and actual water meter readings.
“When we remove the meter we find that the meter reading is higher than the external reading device and they have to pay the difference,” Braun said.
But city residents like Rich Sassi, police chief for the City of Beacon, want to know why they’re now expected to pay for past water consumption caused by a long-standing problem with the exterior meter readers—equipment the city installed and, he said, is responsible for. After having a new water meter installed in his home of 12 years, Sassi was billed in excess of $300 more than his usual quarterly water bill.
He spoke with a clerk at the water department who said the higher bill amount was due to past water usage that had been unaccounted for and that city residents were responsible for making sure the figures on their indoor water meter and outdoor readers match.
Sassi, who has a copy of the city’s codebook, because he’s the police chief, researched the codebook for information on water usage meters and payment for water use.
“If for some reason your meter system stops, they can take an average (bill amount) and bill you that average,” he said, per the city’s codes. “But, there’s still nothing in the code that authorizes them to go back and back-bill you.”
Once the problem with the exterior reading devices was discovered, Sassi wanted to know why the city’s meter readers didn’t verify the outdoor readings by checking them against the inside water meters.
“It’s your equipment, you’re reading it, you bill me and I pay it,” Sassi said, referring to the water department. “I’m not in arrears.”
Beacon resident, Kelly Johnston, has lived in her home for more than 12 years. She was billed $426 after having her new water meter installed for owed money on past water usage. Her usual quarterly bill is about $100.
“They’re telling us the water bill should then level back out again,” she said. “But what happens if they don’t level back out again? Can you imagine having to pay $400 every quarter?”
Someone should make the city of Beacon responsible for this system failure. I am curious as to how many of Beacon homeowners who have had the new meters installed received bills equal to or less than previous bills. My bill was 66% higher as was two of my neighbors.
Posted by: LB | February 03, 2006 at 05:26 PM
Maybe the meters should be tested by an meter testing facility and the NY Public Service Commission (PSC) be advised as to what is going on here. I'm sure they have rules about back charges on their books.
Posted by: John Warner | February 13, 2006 at 01:25 PM
This is a shame for all the residence in the community. The City should have hired an installation company that had a certified testing facility to show the customers that their old meter was inaccurate. But if there is no city ordinance to back bill the customers, the City is at fault. They are just trying to re-coop some finances back from the "Sensus" reading system, which they over paid for by an estimated $500,000.00. The Sensus system is Not state-of-the-art radio-read design. It is old technology that has been proven to fail extremely quickly, and cost the City more money over time. It looks like the City did not do their research first, and are now trying to get ever nickel and dime out of the residents to pay for the mistake in ordering this know failure system.
Posted by: AM | February 17, 2006 at 09:15 AM