Why Boards Must Be Vigilant About Water Consumption
Jan. 6, 2015 — Paul Vercesi has been living in his apartment on Gramercy Park for more than half a century and is now president of the co-op’s board of directors. After all those years, he thought that he knew everything there was to know about the 81-unit post-war building and its systems. Then one day he got a watery surprise.
A doctor who used a ground-floor apartment as his office decided to move out. When the new shareholder started renovating the space, she discovered an outmoded water-cooled air conditioner inside a closet.
The air conditioner was not only out of date but also was illegal because it didn’t recycle the water it used to cool the apartment, as required by new city regulations. In effect, the co-op had been unknowingly paying thousands of dollars for the water that cooled the doctor’s office and then went down the drain.
“We noticed our building was using more water than similar buildings. So we put a separate meter on the florist who’s in the building, but when the florist left we noticed that our consumption was still out of line," Vercesi says. "We couldn’t figure out where we were using the water. It wasn’t until the doctor moved out that we discovered that 25-year-old air-conditioning unit inside the closet.”
Prior to that discovery, the board had been diligent about monitoring and conserving water — a major new concern for co-ops and condos throughout the city, as water prices have soared in recent years. But the surprise discovery of that hidden and costly air conditioner underscores the need for boards and their property managers to be almost superhumanly vigilant — and to remember that there is no letting up in the campaign to conserve water.
Rising Tide... and Costs
As rates began to rise, the Gramercy Park co-op hired New York Water Management, founded in 1998, to help it monitor its water use and figure out ways to control galloping water bills.
“The first thing we did was go to a metered plan for the building,” says Mark Schwartz, president of New York Water Management. “Then we needed to bill separately for the commercial space since the [Department of Environmental Protection] DEP will no longer bill the stores directly.”
Back in 2000 the DEP decreed that all city properties must have a water meter installed. Water meters were seen as an incentive to conserve and as an alternative to the antiquated and notoriously inaccurate flat-rate water bills.
Those bills were calculated in one of two ways. “Frontage” water bills were based on a building’s street frontage and the number of stories, apartments, and water-using fixtures. That billing system was phased out in the summer of 2012.
The surviving flat rate, known as the Multi-family Conservation Program (MCP), is $976 per unit, regardless of water usage. The MCP still accounts for about $1 billion of the city’s annual $3.8 billion in water billing. It tends to be favored by low- and middle-income buildings, where the boards or landlords calculate it will save money.
When Schwartz assesses buildings that are considering shifting from flat-rate to metered billing, he advises against making the shift unless the potential savings are sizable — at least 20 percent.
Schwartz also advises clients to stay on top of leaks. “Leaks are what kill you,” says Schwartz, noting that a single leaking toilet can cost as much as $1,000-$5,000 per year, a fair amount of money for a whole lot of nothing.
Adapted from "Water Vigilance" by Bill Morris (Habitat, January 2015)
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