Mission changes course on water meter scheme

Mission’s quest to get a water meter at every home in town looks like it will continue for decades, even after its council greenlit changes this week meant to expedite the process.

The city will begin providing and installing meters for free in 100 homes each year in an attempt to reduce water consumption and get more homes on the devices. The free-meter program follows a previous failed attempt that failed to generate interest from residents. The prior initiative promised to partially subsidize the costly installation of the device but left owners on the hook for thousands of dollars in up-front costs.

Conserving water, slowly

The city has long required water meters to be installed on new homes. The meters allow the city to charge residents for water based on their usage levels, rather than a flat fee. That incentivizes homeowners to use less water and has been instrumental in reducing per capita water usage in Mission. Meters can also mean lower bills for residents who use comparatively little water.

Mission first mandated water meters in new homes 15 years ago, when Abbotsford and Mission—which share a joint water system—thought they would run out of water capacity. After voters rejected a $300 million plan to tap Stave Lake, both communities focused on water conservation, a strategy that has largely worked and reduced the urgency to tap a new source. (The two communities are currently developing a cheaper water source plan that involves digging new wells in Abbotsford but the system still has plenty of capacity.)

Although there are about 2,800 meters on houses today, there are still 8,000 homes that predate the meter mandate and still don’t have the devices. In 2023, the city adopted a plan that would help subsidize homeowners who wish to install a water meter at their home. To do so, the city budgeted $300,000 for subsidies each year. The money would pay $600 towards the installation cost of each meter.

But a year later, few homeowners have taken the city up on their offer. (The precise number is unclear; a consultants’ report described the number of installations as “very few.”)

The city believed that uptake would be higher not just because homeowners who use little water would end up paying lower utility bills each year.

The problem is that buying and installing meters is expensive—between $3,000 and $5,000 each—and the $600 promised by the city hasn’t been enough to incentivize their installation, according to a new report to Mission’s council by a consulting firm.

Those consultants told the city that for Mission’s water meter subsidy scheme to work, participants must believe their investment will be repaid within three years. Mission’s program was failing because homeowners would have to wait much longer than that for the money they spent to be repaid.

The city is now shifting course and will take the $300,000 that had been set aside for subsidies and use it to directly pay to install up to 100 metres every year. Residents will be able to apply for a meter online.

That will increase the pace of installations, but still won’t leave the city on pace to have every home metered before the end of the century.

Coun. Danny Plecas said he was concerned about the length of time it will take for all homes to be connected to a meter, but added: “We’re getting started and this is important.”

The city’s consultants had suggested that if the city wished to expedite installations, it could increase the amount it is spending each year. But that would cost millions.

To achieve universal metering in 23 years, the city would need to spend $1 million each of those years, the consultants estimated.

Mission expects lower water consumption rates to eventually save the municipality millions of dollars on infrastructure and other costs. Getting more meters installed quicker would inevitably increase the long-term savings from reduced consumption. But installing meters in every home in a single year would cost more than $20 million, and just like its residents, the municipality is also hesitant to immediately spend large sums of money that won’t be recouped within a few years. So far, council hasn’t committed more than the $300,000 yearly budget it pledged last year.

The meters will be distributed to single-family homes and sites without complications—like fancy driveways or large retaining walls—that could dramatically increase the cost of installation. Townhome complexes are also particularly expensive to provide meters for because of the number and sizes of meters, council was told at its meeting earlier this week.

The city has also pledged to create a simpler “hassle-free” process to apply for a smart meter, and will be spending $30,000 on a public awareness campaign to alert residents of the revised program.

Finally, the city will also allow property owners whose meters lead to the discovery of ongoing leaks to apply for a one-time billing adjustment if the leak is fixed. That’s intended to avoid any poor publicity that could arise from a new water meter user being hit by a huge bill—an occurrence that could deter others from applying for a meter.