HOUSTON — Next week, Houston’s Mayor and City Council members are both promising to take up the issue of high water bills. It’s an issue we’ve heard about all year, from viewers like you calling us for help. Our Consumer Investigative Reporter Grace White sat down with Houston Public Works Director Carol Haddock to find out what changes they’re making.
Grace White: "What would you tell customers that are looking at a high water bill and feel like they're just not getting answers from public works?"
Carol Haddock: "I would say please give me another chance."
The department is responsible for reading the 500,000 meters in the City of Houston.
Grace White: “What is going on with the high water bills?”
Carol Haddock: “In some cases, it is our metering infrastructure. The meters themselves are not new. The remote read technology that we use to read our meters is aging very rapidly. It's been in the ground since the late 90s, early 2000s.”
Specifically, Haddock points to what’s called the remote read device. It sits on top of the meter and transmits the reading back to the billing department. Many of them are now failing and the supplies they need to fix them haven’t been easy to get since the pandemic.
Carol Haddock: “When COVID hit, and these devices that rely on chips, all of a sudden the chip manufacturing worldwide really slowed down."
Haddock told us in 2020, the department was manually reading 40,000 accounts and estimating as many as 7,000 of them. Fast forward to today, it’s more than tripled to manually reading 125,000 accounts and estimating 40,000.
Carol Haddock: “We're required to go out and get more manual readings than we have people to go out and get, and so we end up with a lot of accounts that are estimated."
Grace White: “What changes, other changes, will you make in the new year in 2024 to regain the public's trust?”
Carol Haddock: "We have a long ways to go to regain the public's trust of this, we're discussing some ordinance changes.”
Those ordinance changes, introduced by Council Members Peck, Evans-Shabazz and Huffman would prevent the department from back-billing a customer for more than three months unless it’s in the customer's favor.
Carol Haddock:“We welcome looking at those looking at questions like if we've been estimating and it's our fault. Should there be any back billing?"
Those ordinance changes are expected to be discussed next week on Dec. 6 at the City Council meeting.
If you’re wondering how far Public Works is on the remote read devices, Haddock told us they’ve done 71,000 and they have 430,000 to go.
If you receive an unusually large water bill, you can apply for a one-time credit adjustment through Houston Public Works, by filling out this form.
To apply for a leak adjustment, click here.
To register for high-usage alerts, fill out this application.
If you have a problem, Grace Can Help. Call (713) 521-HELP or email GraceCanHelp@khou.com.