I was listening to a morning radio show the other day and heard some pundits really go to town on the issue of Toronto’s faulty water meters. These guys wasted no time piling on criticism, proclaiming the issue as proof that the City and its water system are facing impending doom. As you might expect, I have a different take.
For those of you who may not have heard about our water meter challenges, I’ll give a quick recap. Earlier this year, Toronto Water staff discovered that many of our automated Water Meter Transmission Units (MTUs) were failing prematurely. These are battery-powered devices that automatically send your water usage data to the City, saving significant time and money as staff no longer have to go and check water meters manually. The MTUs in question were installed about 12-14 years ago, and had an expected lifespan of 20 years. However, about 30% of these units have stopped working this year.
Now, I want to go back to these radio pundits and their take on the issue. When listening to or reading media about municipal issues, it’s important to keep two things in mind:
Cities don’t get things done by shuffling money to other governments and partners. We actually execute actions and deliver services on the ground.
Cities are transparent to a fault. We are a public institution and deliver services, so we publicly report on what we’re doing as much as possible. We also disclose when we’ve done something wrong and spell out how we’re going to fix it.
There is a lot of blowback that results from always reporting on our mistakes. I sometimes envy the private utility companies out there, like telecommunications and gas companies. While I’m sure they have rigorous internal processes to find their inefficiencies and errors, there is nothing compelling them to share information about problems that can be quietly fixed. Their shareholders might find out months after the solution to a problem has already been implemented. All the while, you and I just keep paying our phone bills, none the wiser.
Unlike these private companies, your local government is accountable to you. We are spending your money and you deserve full transparency on how it is spent. There is an independent Toronto Auditor General who investigates issues with City services and publicly reports on their findings. When staff identify an issue without or before Auditor General involvement, they are still required to be transparent and publicly account for how they will fix the problem.
This is exactly what happened with the water meter transmission unit failures. As soon as Toronto Water learned that a sampling of bills were inaccurate, they began to check meters across the city. It turns out that the units that were installed earliest were the ones having problems. Toronto Water staff then knew that they could get to work solving the problem by moving across the city in order of installation. We are lucky here in Don Valley North to have been towards the end of that installation process, meaning we’re less likely to be experiencing water meter transmission issues now.
Of course, solutions rarely make headlines in the news—problems do. The important thing to know is that these units are under extended warranty for their full twenty-year lifespan, so the issue is being addressed in partnership with the manufacturer. Several other cities across Ontario are facing the same issue as they installed the same transmission units, and all are in the process of working with the manufacturer to replace them. Writing an article about municipal failure evokes emotions, and that’s the whole point of news media these days. Writing an article about how the city responsibly negotiated a warranty for the full promised life of new equipment doesn’t have the same pizzazz.
In the coming months, Toronto Water will come to the Infrastructure & Environment Committee with a procurement process for our next iteration of water meter technology. The City is also arranging for a supply of replacement meters until the next system can be properly procured.
In the meantime, you will receive a letter (or may have already) outlining the issues being experienced with the water meter transmission units. The important thing to know is that the meters themselves are working just fine and are accurately recording water usage. It is just the piece of equipment that automatically transmits those readings to the City that have stopped working for some households.
If you do have a faulty water meter transmission unit, you have been switched to estimated billing. Rest assured that the City has an accurate and reliable process for estimated billing, and that no customer will pay for more than their actual water consumption due to these MTU failures. The letter sent in the mail also details ways to submit manual readings of your water meter, which can be done by calling 3-1-1 or visiting the utility counter at any Civic Centre. You can learn more information at the link below:
Bottom line, while the City has to address the shorter battery life and warranty claims for these automated transmission units, they still delivered savings over their true lifetime in the tens of millions of dollars. The financial benefits to the City of these units is estimated at $32.8 million per year, including $27.8 million in revenue recovery and $5 million in operating savings. We also have full confidence that the next system purchased will be more reliable, as the technology has advanced greatly in the past 15 years since this batch of units was acquired. They’ve also been in use longer and the suppliers of the equipment have more experience under their belts.
I believe there is a bigger lesson in all of this. We are the level of government that is constantly implementing solutions and providing services. We are going to experience everything from small hiccups to big fat problems from time to time. Every time that happens, we remain transparent and accountable to you. When you hear about a problem and want to know what the City is doing to fix it, don’t hesitate to contact my office. City staff provide me and my team with briefings on solutions and next steps as quickly as possible because they know the solutions won’t appear on the front page of the news. My team and I are always happy to get the word out.