Drip, Drip, Drip: Another Missed Deadline on Metered Water Billing

New York City bureaucrats must love to miss a deadline. Since the late 1990’s the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been trying to switch water billing from a flat-rate to a metered system. The goal was to promote conservation. If people are billed for the water they actually use, the thinking went, they’ll have an incentive to eliminate waste, fix leaks, modernize fixtures, and reduce overall water usage.

Most co-ops and condos have switched to metered billing, because buildings that institute conservation measures tend to save money under this system. In 2012, the DEP abandoned the old “frontage” flat-rate billing option and forced all flat-rate users onto the Multi-family Conservation Program (MCP), which charges $1,004 per apartment per year – as opposed to the $9.87 per 100 cubic feet for buildings with water meters.

June 30 of this year was supposed to be another deadline. Buildings that wished to remain on the MCP flat rate would have until that date to comply with various conservation measures and install separate meters for high-use commercial tenants, such as restaurants. But guess what? The DEP has extended the deadline, yet again, to Dec. 31. (The DEP did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this article.)

Hershel Weiss, chief engineer at Ashokan Water Services, a Brooklyn-based water management firm, attributes the persistent delays to several factors, including the DEP being “overwhelmed by paperwork, and pushback from the real-estate lobby.” Residential landlords, especially in high-density buildings, have lobbied vigorously against metered billing.

Weiss advises property owners, including condos and co-ops, to perform their own analysis on water costs to determine which system is the least expensive for each building. Co-ops and condo boards need to take three steps to assess the situation:

• Track water usage in the building, which can be done free on the DEP website;

• Determine which rates are best for the building;

• “Bill anyone you can on water bills,” Weiss says, “such as commercial tenants or swimming pool owners in high-end buildings.”

The repeated extension of deadlines by DEP has had the effect of penalizing properties for complying with the law, says Alan Rothschild, president of Vantage Group, a New Jersey-based firm that specializes in water management. Vantage worked with several boards that were exasperated by the recurring deadline extensions. “They spent time and money complying with the requirements for the supposed June 30th deadline, only to find the deadline extended,” Rothschild says.

These boards were also angered that the DEP has softened the penalties. Buildings that don’t switch to metered billing by Dec. 31 will pay a 10 percent surcharge on their flat-rate bills. “In some cases,” says Rothschild, “that’s less than the metered rate.”

While the long-term savings of metered billing are undeniable, installing water meters isn’t cheap. The cost differs on each project and depends on how many business establishments are affected, but it ranges between $5,000 and $10,000 on average – and can go higher.

Despite all the missteps and missed deadlines, Rothschild says the conversion to metered billing by most co-ops and condos has helped the city make progress toward its desired goal. “It has worked well,” he says. “Water consumption is down.”