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Equipment problems in over 100,000 water meters are costing some Houstonians big bucks.

Most folks don’t pay much attention to the water they use – unless their payment stands out. 

“When you open up the bill and it’s nearly $3,000, it’s quite a shock,” Dwight Cook said.

Cook’s January bill was, in fact, $3,000.  The month before it was $34.

Naturally, he called the city.  They said he had been underpaying since 2005, and this was his backpayment.

“They essentially told me they had not taken a meter reading in the past two and a half years,” Cook said.

The city had been averaging his bills. 

Unhappy with their response, Cook contacted 11 News, and we contacted the city. 

They said the bill was a mistake, and that it shouldn’t have gone out.

In fact, 11 News learned this is all part of a much bigger problem – public works tells us it has impacted nearly one in every four water meters.

11 News

In 1999, the city began adding radio encoders to all meters so they could be read remotely and quickly.  They should last eight years, but starting failing after just two years.

The city contracted Itron, the vendor, which replaced 20-25,000 of the encoders at no charge. 

And since so many transmitter are failing so early, the city had to call back its old meter readers.

Partly because of all this, the city has had to estimate 1-2% of its water bills.

Presumably, a real person actually looked at Cook’s meter to determine his backlog of water, but it turns out the glass on his meter was so scratched up … it couldn’t be read at all.

The city promises it’s working on Cook’s case, but an audit revealed a number of other interesting concerns about the water meters in use.

Most actual meters the city has currently need to be replaced because sediment clogs up the old ones and they’ve been reading too little water.

The city should finish replacing all the meters and transmitter in the next 18 months.

The other problem is, the city simply can’t find 12,000 water meters for replacements.  They say they’re working on that too.