HOUSTON — The City of Houston has a 10-year plan to upgrade parts on water meters, but public records show they are behind on the installation.
One of the parts called a remote reading device is aging out. When it doesn't work, someone from public works has to go out and physically read the meter. However, if there isn't enough manpower, the bills get estimated. It becomes an issue when the estimates are off and customers get surprised with high water bills.
Last November, KHOU 11 sat down with Carol Haddock, the Director of Houston Public Works. She told us the tiny part they need to do the upgrades had been slowed down by the pandemic.
"When COVID hit and these devices that rely on chips, all of a sudden the chip manufacturing worldwide really slowed down," said Haddock.
But we wanted to know just how slow. From the beginning, it was a 10-year plan starting in 2020. The original deployment plan had the city planning to have 144,900 remote read devices installed by January 2024.
As of last month, the city had only installed 80,318 devices. Public records obtained by KHOU 11 show the current inventory of those devices the city has uninstalled and on-hand is 24,413.
We asked the city what was being done to speed up the process this year, but they declined an on-camera interview.
Why should customers care? Because only people with new remote reading devices can get access to a new online dashboard, giving them the ability to see 24/7 how much water they're actually using. Right now, that's only 16% of Houston's customers.
A public works spokeswoman told us they are actively working with Mayor Whitmire to finalize the details of a new plan to address water bills. They said once that plan is released, they will be able to share more information.
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