Bunk Data Disaster

Meter-reading devices are causing headaches.

And as officials prepare to install different water meter readers starting this June, new faces in City Hall's Public Utilities Department are discovering the extent of the problem that led to under-billing and massive catch-up bills for scores of residents as well as a yet-unknown amount of uncollected revenue for water services.

The city has known for years that Texas-based Datamatic Inc.'s Firefly meters, which were supposed to transmit information about water use at most of the city's homes and businesses, have been providing bad data.

What are officials doing about it?

They say they're attempting to collect money on accounts for years of water use and hope that new devices will enable correct billing soon. But the ad-hoc methods of addressing the issue since 2012 have apparently failed to capture all the affected water customers. Those whose erroneous bills are discovered can end up with thousands of dollars past due.

Sound fair?

District 3 Councilor Chris Rivera, chair of the Public Utilities Committee, calls the situation "tricky."

"If the water was used, you want to bill for the water," he says. "You don't want to set a precedent with giving away water."

The city sued Datamatic three years ago in the state's First Judicial District Court, alleging the company had breached a 2004 contract to supply and maintain the meter readers.

The readers were aimed at saving the city time and money, because instead of reading the meters manually, officials were able to drive by homes and businesses and gather water use information remotely, issuing bills based on the number gallons of water that went through a customer's water line in a month.

But the relationship between the city and the Texas company soon turned bitter. Santa Fe alleged in a complaint that as of June 2012, at least 12,725 of Datamatic's meters were not been functioning properly. Datamatic refused to make good on its warranty for the devices, alleged the city, which claimed the devices had a failure rate of 40 percent. That's far more than the company's "fraudulent misrepresentation" to City Hall that the failure rate of the meters would not exceed 3 percent, the lawsuit says.

The case halted when Datamatic, in October 2013, notified the court that it had filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy case is ongoing in federal court, and Datamatic is now selling an automated meter-reading device called a Rocket, according to its website. It's not clear whether the city will continue to attempt to recover money through the courts. Court records indicate that other similarly situated municipalities are making claims against Datamatic in the bankruptcy case.

But officials here are still attempting to recoup costs from residents.

Santa Fe's water utility came under public ownership after the city purchased the system from PNM in the '90s. Known in city parlance as an "enterprise fund," it's supposed to be sustained through water rates. And making sure everyone pays for the water they use is Diana Catanach's job.

The city worker who says she's been on the job as the director of the Utility Billing Division for about seven months is tasked with getting a handle on the meter-reading debacle.

Rather than yank the Fireflys altogether and return to a labor-intensive manual-reading scenario, the city instead made plans to install a different brand of automated meter readers from Badger, a Wisconsin-based company.

In the meantime, officials are "chipping away at" a list of 300 accounts for previous water use, Catanach says, and have back-billed and collected from about 600 water accounts where meters have been misread since about 2008.

Officials flag accounts, she says, by finding active water meters with month-to-month reads of zero and then issuing a work order to get a manual read on the meter.

One of those accounts belongs to Santa Fe's top commercial water user, Quail Run Association, where a Firefly was misreading last year, say city officials. Last year, that gated community, which has residential units, a golf course, a restaurant and laundry facilities, consumed 22.3 million gallons of water.

When SFR conducted its annual records inquiry to learn about the city's major water users from the last year, many of the residential customers who showed up on the list say the devices were also to blame for records that show inflated annual use because of years of erroneous bills.

In the new Badger deal, the City Council agreed to pay $8.3 million in a ten-year agreement for 34,000 new meters.

City officials say they will begin to install the new Badger meter readers at the largest accounts first, like Santa Fe Public Schools. It could take months, if not longer, for new meter readers to be installed on residential accounts.

The city water utility served nearly 81,000 customers in 2013, according to figures in its Drought Management Plan.

In February, the city made another big move when it terminated the primary application and support person for the Utility Billing Division, according to a city memo.

The March 20 memo asks the City Council's Finance Committee to approve a $76,734 contract with Mountain River Consulting to conduct testing of a new utility billing system.

Santa Fe Reporter