These new water meters are something of a technological wonder. No longer does the WSSC have to send someone to visit each individual meter to either read the faceplate dials of the older mechanical units or insert a reader probe into the data port of the newer digital meters. That is all so twentieth century, as the saying goes; the new ultra-accurate digital meters actually upload their data directly to the WSSC via satellite link, no human intervention required.
Or so goes the theory. The truth is, "Nope, don't work, no way, no how."
Perhaps I should be a little more specific. The data link works exactly as advertised. The problem is entirely constrained to the realm of accuracy.
Historically, water in this area has been relatively inexpensive; for the first few years I owned my current home, my average monthly bill was in the vicinity of $15 even when I rented out both extra bedrooms. Of course, those bills have become quite a bit more expensive in the intervening years, but water remains the least expensive service passing through the walls of my home by an extremely large margin.
Apparently that's not the case for homeowners with the new 21st century super-accurate digital satellite water meters.
The first WSSC bill my co-worker received for his small single-family home housing a frugal family of four topped a whopping $600. Yes, six hundred dollars' worth of water was supposed to have passed through all that new piping and through the sensors of that super-duper new water meter in a single month. Even my co-workers' neighbors with in-ground swimming pools had lower bills, so he immediately logged a complaint with the WSSC customer service staff.
Fast-forward a few weeks, and the next bill arrived in the mail -- the bill that was supposed to include a corrected balance for the previous month.
$14,000.00
Yes, fourteen thousand dollars for a smallish single-family home inhabited by two alert & oriented adults and two alert & oriented "tweenage" kids.
I visited the WSSC website just before beginning this post and checked their billing rates. The highest combined billing rate for both sewer & water usage is $15.90 per every thousand gallons per day -- for 9,000 gallons or more per day. (You can double-check my figures at wsscwater.com)That's nine thousand gallons or more of water per day, a rate of usage that is a physical impossibility for the plumbing in an average home. Even better, if you divide 14,000 by 15.9 you will see that it would take 880 days to incur the charges WSSC insists my co-worker's family owes on a 60-day bill.
My co-worker isn't annoyed; he is livid. His wife is upset and (rightfully) scared that WSSC will insist their insane bill is correct and take legal action to collect the full $14,000.
Me? You guessed it: I'm annoyed. I'm also frightened because I have heard through the grapevine that the WSSC is planning to replace all water meters in the region with the same model that is so thoroughly screwing over my co-worker; worried because I know the WSSC will do everything in their power to put the blame for similar errors on homeowners; and concerned because this is yet another example of how the most glaringly obvious errors remain unseen but actively enforced by the bureaucracies upon which we are all forced to depend.
But yeah, I'm annoyed. I hope other WSSC customers are, too.
ADDENDUM:
When I got to work today (several hours after posting the original version of this post, above the divider line) I asked my co-worker how things were going with WSSC. He said that his situation has not changed yet... but that one of his neighbors is also lodging a complaint with WSSC now that his home has one of the new meters installed. It seems that this neighbor's house is not hooked up to the WSSC system -- it draws 100% of its water from a well and pipes 100% of its effluent into a septic tank, both located on the property and maintained privately by the neighbor -- and yet WSSC is threatening him for nonpayment of his water bill. Go figure...
No comments:
Post a Comment