Rossland city council has decided to upgrade its troubled water meter system after all.
At a special meeting July 4, councillors voted to spend more than $420,000 to fix the broken metering system.
The decision came about three weeks after council first balked at a costly bid to fix the system, and asked staff to look into flat-rate water billing.
Rossland’s mayor says in the long run, council’s investment in upgrades will mean better water conservation and save taxpayers money. Kathy Moore says the upgraded system could be operating by January 2019.
“By making the decision now, the new meter reader solution can be up and running before the end of the year,” she says. “There is an installation component to this project and we have about 1,800 meters to update. On the administrative and legislative side, there are also things to be done like bylaws and getting new systems in place, all of which needs a bit of time.”
Moore called the special meeting after council rejected a bid of $421,701 from Corix Water Products LP for upgrades to the city’s water metering system, which hasn’t been working properly for over a year. The problem related to interference that prevented the meters from transmitting data on water use to City Hall.
As a result, the city’s been estimating residential water use during that time. Balking at the hefty price tag to replace the data chips (and the annual $26,000 subscription fee to transfer the data on top of that), council voted to send the problem back to staff to look for other options.
“The decision not to accept the Corix bid was because we wanted to explore some other actions, including but not limited to a flat rate,” says Moore. “We had more questions and needed staff to provide some more info.”
At the July 4 meeting, staff heard from Meredith Hampstead from the Columbia Basin Trust’s Watersmart program. Moore says it was an excellent presentation that set the context for metering, and examined the city’s historical water use.
Moore said Hampstead told council four pillars have to be followed to truly reduce water use — a combination of meters, education, conservation pricing, and water restrictions. (Read Hampstead’s report from the Council Agenda link, page 3, below)
The Context for Water Demand Management in Rossland
“We installed meters, did education for a couple of years with the Water Smart Ambassador program, we periodically call for water restrictions but were very lax on enforcement because we didn’t have a bylaw officer until recently,” says Moore. She says what council didn’t do is implement conservation pricing.
“We stalled on this very important step. Council had other priorities and without a council direction, staff was also busy with other projects. Rather than throw out meters, we believe the better course of action will be to fully commit to all the steps necessary.”
While the repair bill is big, it won’t have any significant impact on tax rates. Funding for the project will come from city reserves — $300,000 had already been set aside for the project — and about $147,000 from the federal Gas Tax Community Works fund that municipalities receive. Water rates will go up a little, however, to cover the cost of the data subscription for the new transmitter chips.
Moving to a user-pay system
However, a bigger change also approved at the meeting has council planning to make the city’s water system pay for itself. The cost of operating the system isn’t covered completely by water rates, but instead subsidized by taxes. While Rossland’s no different from many other municipalities that do the same thing, it’s not a state of affairs that’s encouraged.
And it’s going to end. Council approved a plan to raise utility rates by 13 per cent annually “to bring the funds out of a Deficit balance”, the motion read.
“For whatever voodoo reason, this essential service has always been underpriced, thus undervalued by consumers,” says Moore. “Over time we need to collect what it actually costs to have clean water delivered to everyone’s tap and the true costs of removing the waste water. I know it sounds like common sense, but we haven’t been doing it. In fact most municipalities in Canada don’t do it.”
Staff will now draw up details on how to implement a 13 per cent annual increase to bring to council. Council will review how well the increase has moved the city to a user-pay system for water in five years or so.
Moore says it’s important for the city to get its house in order when it comes to its water and sewer costs, as a major infrastructure project looms in the distance — a $40-50 million project to upgrade the Rossland-Warfield-Trail sewage treatment plant. Each partner now pays according to what they contribute — Rossland has managed to cut its share from 25 per cent to 20 per cent — and the same formula will be in place when the upgrade has to occur.
“There is a huge advantage to get that percentage reduced since we are looking at upgrading the plant from a primary to a secondary treatment plant,” she says.
Mystery remains
In the end, council voted 3-2 in favour of accepting the Corix bid, paying the subscription service and moving the city away from using operating funds to pay for the water and sewer system.
But what caused the problem in the first place — the interference that prevented the meters from sending data to City Hall — remains a mystery. And, Moore says, it will likely remain one.
“A lot of time has been spent over the last year trying to determine the cause and we have been unsuccessful. The advice we’ve been given by outside, independent experts is to move on,” she says. “I know some people don’t like that decision, but we have a small staff, limited time and resources to devote to beating this problem. We’ve been gnawing on it for a year.”