Automated water meters could be coming to Winnipeg homes

New technology could be coming to Winnipeg that would end the practice of submitting meter readings or having a meter reader come into your home, and some believe it could save homeowners from spiking water bills.

It's welcome news for Gary Henaire, who ran into some water bill trouble after his mother passed.

Henaire says following his mother's death a couple of years ago, he wanted to settle the water bill for her house. It was normally $300 every quarter, but when he went to check it…

"The bill ended up being well over $4,000 and at that point clearly we had an issue," he told CTV News.

Henaire said if a leak was causing the problem, finding that out sooner rather than later would have been better.

"Say the leak started the day after she took the water meter reading and then 90 days later she finds out she's been leaking water for 90 days – yeah, clearly you'd like to know a little bit ahead of time," he said.

And soon that might happen.

A new report is recommending Winnipeg move ahead with a $135 million plan to replace 217,000 existing residential and commercial water meters with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI).

The report says the new meters would improve customer service, save money and improve the accuracy of readings.

“The business case projects AMI will improve accuracy in billing and increase annual revenue by $16.1 million once implementation is complete," the report states. "Further, a reduction of $2.2 million in operating costs is projected annually post implementation."

More than 60 per cent of current meters are past their service date and tend to under-register water usage.

"Say for example your meter being 25 years old under registers and my meter being one year old registers accurately, so I'm paying for all the water I'm using hence you're not," said Lucy Szawarek, the manager of finance and administration for the city's water and waste department.

The report says AMI technology enables meters to be read remotely from a central location using radio transmitters attached to each water meter.

It says this eliminates the need for customers to send in quarterly readings or have a meter reader enter the home. And if water consumption spikes because of a possible leak, the customer could be notified before things get out of hand.

"Because we've had these awful cases of people getting water bills of $20,000, $30,000 going to the Ombudsman," said Coun. Brian Mayes, chair of the water and waste committee.

Henaire believes the idea is worth the $135 million price tag. He said he fought his mother's water bill and had it significantly reduced, but he worries others could get soaked.

"That's the part that's a little scary to me is that there are probably a lot of seniors around that might be alarmed by it but they probably would still pay it without fighting it."

The report does recommend seeking help to cover the cost of the project from other levels of government. If approved by council, installations of the new metres could begin in 2025, and be completed by 2029.