Audit: Aging water meters, leaks cost Apopka $1.2 million

Many of Apopka’s “smart” water meters apparently can’t read.

An audit ordered by the Apopka City Council last fall blamed the failing high-tech meters for the city’s inability to account for 750 million gallons of water piped to residential and business customers in 2016. The lost water represents 26.1 percent of drinking water distributed by the city and is enough to fill 1,136 Olympic-size pools. The audit estimated the city lost $1.2 million in revenue in 2016 from meter failures and system leaks.

“It’s a costly infrastructure problem,” said Joe Kilsheimer, whose four-year term as Apopka mayor ended Tuesday when his successor Bryan Nelson was sworn in.

The city’s consumptive wateruse permit with the St. Johns River Management District says “unaccounted for” water cannot exceed 10 percent. St. Johns

spokeswoman Danielle Spears said the agency sampled audits from a handful of Central Florida cities with smart meters — including Casselberry, Ocoee, Sanford and Winter Park — and each showed less than 10 percent water loss.

The smart meters, introduced in Orange County’s second-largest city in 2007 at a cost of $3 million, feature technology designed to read devices that track the amount of water used at a home or business. Those figures are then transmitted via radio frequencies to city computers, which tally a customer’s monthly water bill.

The meters were supposed to improve waterbilling accuracy and save money by reducing a cadre of meter readers who gathered billing data manually by visually inspecting the meters.

But as Apopka’s smart meters have aged, the amount of water considered “unaccounted for” has increased.

When the city used humans to read meters, typically the amount of unaccounted-for water was calculated as about 2 percent to 4 percent. A state-mandated audit in 2014 showed Apopka’s percentage had risen to 9.9 percent.

That was troubling because it is more than double the amount of lost water allowed under the permit Apopka uses to draw water from the Lower Floridan Aquifer.

High rates of unaccounted-for water often signal breaks or leaks in a city’s miles of water lines. Apopka has 360 miles of pipe.

“We are communicating with them about the 26.1 percent loss,” Spears said in an email. “The rule also says that when it’s over 10 percent they must do things like conduct a meter survey, leak detection, etc.”

Apopka’s system assessment, performed by a consultant for $20,000, was prompted by complaints from customers upset about erratic swings in their water bills, which possibly were related to malfunctioning meters.

Though Apopka was among the first in the region to switch to smart meters, it did not routinely test them for accuracy or have a replacement program as other utilities do.

For example, Winter Garden City Manager Mike Bollhoefer said his city figures on $250,000 a year to switch out and update smart meters.

“You have to,” he said. “Smart meters have to be replaced periodically because they go bad.”

Sanford also has an aggressive replacement program, budgeting $300,000 for new meters.

The Orlando Utilities Commission finished installing 150,000 smart water meters in 2015 to help catch leaks and give customers more up-to-date information about their water use, OUC spokesman Tim Trudell said.

He said all utilities, no matter how modern their system, lose some water.

“We haven’t been perfect,” Trudell said. “But every time I’ve ever looked at it, [water loss] was well below 10 percent.”

As the Apopka audit was under way, the city embarked on an “accelerated meter change-out program,” replacing 100 meters a week to lower unaccounted-for losses.

Apopka’s high-tech meters made a big splash when first installed.

A representative of the meter company boasted about the switch, saying it was “like going from the Flintstones to the Jetsons."

But Kilsheimer said cities ought to take heed.

“This is something cities should be paying keen attention to,” he said. “With water being a critical issue in Florida, knowing exactly how much water you’re taking out of the ground and how much you’re billing is something all cities are going to have to pay increasing attention to.”