It might be easier on your finances but could wreak havoc with ours.
That’s the City of Flin Flon’s rationale for a continued ban on new residential water meters.
“The meters can in some cases result in lower bills” for residents, said Chief Administrative Officer Mark Kolt. “However, if that happens and then there’s a rush of people putting meters in, it throws all the calculations off for what the [city’s] flat rate should be. And the idea was to keep things where they were so that we’d get predictable numbers.”
The city has also justified the ban by saying it cannot afford to install water meters in every home, but even residents willing to pay for a meter themselves are not allowed to get one.
Water meters allow a municipality to adjust each home’s utility bill according to how much water that household consumes.
Flin Flon has prohibited the installation of new meters for at least the past eight years. The relatively small number of residents who had meters prior to the ban can continue to use them.
With most residents paying a flat rate for water regardless of how much they use, questions of fairness have been raised.
“They’re wanting me to pay the same as what a person who uses twice as much [water] as me pays,” Brian Taylor, a single man who wants to get a meter, told The Reminder last year.
More recently another resident, Sinclair James, asked city council to clarify why people without a lawn must pay the same for water as those who have their sprinklers going every day.
Other costs
Mayor George Fontaine said consumption is not driving the costs associated with the city’s water system.
“Even if you’re using a little more [water], that’s not why it’s costing us more,” he said. “We still have to heat it, we still have to pump it and it’s constantly circulating. So if you use [water], that’s fine. If you don’t use it, it’s still costing us money.”
Coun. Bill Hanson speculated that meters could again be an option in future years, but Kolt wasn’t sure the feasibility would improve with time.
Kolt said meters come with an installation cost, require an employee to read them and must be replaced as they wear out over time.
He said that while governments encourage the use of water meters, they are not legally required.
None of those arguments stopped the previous city council from voting in 2007 to mandate water meters for every Flin Flon home – a decree that was never enacted.
The city has applied to boost utility rates by 30 per cent this year in response to costs associated with operating the water treatment plant.
