High water bill leads to questioned meter readings

Published 3:00 pm Friday, July 24, 2015

City Hall.

After noticing an unusually high water bill for his agency in May, Suwannee Valley Transit Authority Administrator Larry Sessions formed a theory: the city’s water meter readers have been estimating usage, leading to identical monthly bills, and have only recently charged SVTA for three years’ worth of underestimated usage.

Sessions, who is also a Suwannee County commissioner, presented his theory before the Live Oak City Council last week following Councilman Bennie Thomas’ request to authorize the finance director to adjust high utility bills for customers who have experienced a “misfortune,” like a water leak. Thomas said he knew of 15 to 20 people who reportedly had a leak and were put on a payment plan for their high bills, which is standard city practice.

The conversation was redirected at Sessions’ suggestion that leaks may not even be the source of the high water bills.

“Statistics are used to create trends and quantifiable results are used to develop theories, and my theory is that we don’t really have leaks that people should be worried about,” Sessions said. “My theory is someone’s not doing their job reading the meters.”

According to Sessions, out of the last 36 months or three years, SVTA’s water bill was exactly $212.38 for 16 different months. Seven months were all exactly $220.39, five months were $228.40, and four were $204.37.

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In May, SVTA received a bill for $559.56 – an increased usage of nearly 40,000 gallons, Sessions said. Sessions believes the high bill came from three years’ worth of underestimated water usage being tacked on in one month.

Finance Director and interim City Manager Jan Parkhurst believes the SVTA’s identical bills could be attributed to the city’s minimum billing policy. Each business and residence is expected to use a minimum amount of water each month and is charged for that minimum usage even if they use less than that, Parkhurst explained to the Democrat on Tuesday. If a business or residence is using less than the minimum amount, their water bill could be identical for multiple different months.

Meter readings are currently performed by a team of two people with CH2M-Hill OMI, the city’s public works provider, Parkhurst explained. Each month, the team goes out and checks each meter, and any reading outside of the city’s variance will automatically generate an electronic report. A third party is sent to investigate the abnormal reading, and if their re-read comes out greater than the original – accounting for accumulated usage between the original reading and the re-read – then the meter is working fine. If the re-read comes out less than the original, there is a problem with the meter; this is a rare occurrence, Parkhurst added.

“I have total faith in the team,” she said. “The man that leads this team has done his job very well for over 25 years; I trust him.”

As for the SVTA’s high water bill, Roy Hutchinson, project manager for CH2M-Hill OMI, said a meter reader had found a creep in SVTA’s meter last month, meaning it was running slow. A creep is an indication of a leak somewhere on their property and the reader informed SVTA staff about it, Hutchinson said. Hutchinson also noted SVTA’s back flow device was found to be leaking several months ago; again, a leak on private property, which is not the city’s responsibility to repair.

Sessions asserts there is no leak, noting SVTA’s water bill returned back down to the $200s in June after no leak repairs had been made on their property.

Parkhurst stated she and OMI staff will research the SVTA’s issue and readdress it and the city’s overall water meter procedures at a workshop on Tuesday, July 28, at 3 p.m. at Live Oak City Hall.

In 2008, the city also encountered issues with high water bills and water meter readings. Then-councilor John Hale believed meter readers had been estimating monthly usage at a minimal rate, then “catching up” sometime later, resulting in spikes in customers’ bills. Parkhurst said this was the case back then and the person responsible for estimating the readings was fired.