Agenda

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13.

City Council Regular Meeting

Meeting Date:

05/25/2021

BACKGROUND

Currently, residential buildings come with one standard meter for both in home use and irrigation purposes. Water use is tracked by the meter and sewer charges are estimated using a technique called Winter Averaging. The City pays a treatment provider to clean up the wastewater and those charges are shown on the utility bill as a sewer charge based on the winter average.

If there is only one meter on the property, there is no easy way to determine how much of the water goes into the yard and what goes to be treated at a treatment plant. A common method to estimate the wastewater that goes down the drain to a treatment plant is called Winter Averaging. During the winter months, it is assumed that residents will not water their yards so all of their water usage would be inside the house and go down the drain. The City takes the lowest 3 months of water usage from October through February and comes up with an average use to calculate a monthly sewer rate.

That rate is set for each residential customer for the next year until a new winter average is calculated. New residents without a historical estimate are given a rate based on the citywide average sewer rate until the next winter averaging cycle.

The Winter Average isn't a perfect system but it is widely used by water utility providers. In Schertz, notices are posted on bills, the website, on social media, and in the magazine notifying customers how sewer averaging works and to encourage them to reduce water usage to get a low sewer rate for the upcoming year. However, Staff has been seeing more residents that want to continue to water during the winter and maintain their yards in the region's, mostly, mild winters. This practice causes much higher sewer bills which could be as low as $38 if water is conserved but could reach over $100 per month instead.

Some residents are fine with having higher monthly bills if it means they can water through the winter, while others wish for a different calculation method that more accurately reflects sewer use.

Staff has been reviewing options and is proposing to test a new service that will install a second water meter to irrigation lines. Using the information provided by the second meter, staff will be able to tell how much water goes into the yard and will not need to be treated and how much goes into the house and down the drain. This would remove the need to estimate sewer use and provide actual usage information for billing.

The cost for the installation would be on the homeowner. The meter would be $250 plus a permit fee of $60 and an additional $50 for a floodplain permit if applicable. A total charge to the City of $360 in the floodplain. Based on billing information of residential properties that have high sewer averages, this second meter would pay for itself in 6 months or less and then continue to save customers going forward. After the initial cost of installation, any repairs and meter replacements due to normal wear and tear would be on the City, just like the original meter.

Staff is proposing a trial period to test the application and billing process before opening it up to the community as a whole. Feedback will be collected from the pilot group to judge how successful this practice will be in Schertz.

Having a second irrigation meter for residential homes is emerging as an alternate to solution to winter averaging used by other utility providers. New Braunfels Utilities as an example has a similar program.

Attached is a copy of the application and program description that would be made available to customers interest in the initial program.

Attachments
Residential Meter Permit Requirements
Residential Meter Application Form