Water transmission unit failures lead to hefty bills for thousands of Toronto residents

The City of Toronto says it will need to replace some 141,000 water transmission units after they unexpectedly failed, leaving more than 7,000 Torontonians facing hefty water bills in the process.

Lou Di Gironimo, the general manager of Toronto Water, says the issue is a connectivity problem between some of the meters and the billing system. He says while it’s common for one or two per cent of the meters to experience issues, that number jumped significantly this past winter.

“While the water meters themselves are working, it was confirmed the water meter transmission units were failing at a higher rate than usual following further analysis and engagement with the supplier,” he told reporters at City Hall on Thursday afternoon.

Di Gironimo says it will take two to three years to fix the faulty units but notes all of them will eventually have to be replaced.

“The failures will continue, even from those units that are still working right now.”

Di Gironimo could not say how much it would cost to fix the units but said the units are still under warranty.

For those households that did not receive utility bills in May or June and are now facing hefty increases in the latest billing, Di Gironimo says the City has created a dedicated customer service team that is available through 311 to work with residents and create payment plans so that big bills will not have to be paid all at once.

In effect, the City is returning to its previous system of estimating water consumption and there will also be the option to call 311 and provide manual water meter readings until the MTUs are replaced.

The City installed more than 470,000 devices almost 15 years ago in order to automate the billing system and eliminate the need for City staff to physically go and check the meters to calculate how much water had been consumed.