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Amid rising political pressure and months of complaints from Houstonians hit with surprise charges, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner on Monday proposed a wide-ranging package of water billing reforms.
Turner said he hopes to do away with an annual cap on leak adjustments, provide bigger incentives for residents to fix leaks and make relief for surprise bills more generous.
In total, Turner is offering nine fixes for City Council approval Wednesday. Taken together, they should resolve most Department of Public Works water bill complaints without hurting the city’s finances, he said.
“I have heard the community and their frustrations with high water bills. And I know that getting an unexpectedly high water bill is frustrating,” Turner said. “Today we have potential solutions to share with you, and it starts with changes to specific ordinances.”
Outdated ordinances
Those ordinances had handcuffed Department of Public Works staffers who were just as frustrated with persistent billing issues as many of the city’s 550,000 water customers, according to Turner.
Since 2019, officials say, Houston’s aging devices for remotely reading water meters have been failing at a rising rate. The number of accounts requiring a manual reading has increased from 40,000 in 2019 to 125,000 this year, leading the city to resort to estimated readings much more often.
When those estimates turn out to be far off-base, city code often restricts customer service agents from providing residents with relief.
“Quite frankly, these ordinances are outdated and they were written for a different time,” Turner said. “They were created with the assumption that all of the equipment worked properly and we received accurate readings of customers' water usage. Today’s reality is quite different.”
Existing city ordinance prevents customers from requesting more than two water bill adjustments per year for water leaks. Turner is proposing to do away with that limit.
A second change would offer bigger incentives to fix the “private leaks” that are considered the customer’s fault. Customers would receive 100 percent relief on excess charges for fixing leaks within 30 days, 75 percent relief for repairs within 60 days, and 50 percent relief for repairs after that.
Customers also would receive a 100 percent credit on the wastewater charges associated with leaks, because that water rarely returns to the city’s sanitary sewage system.
Residential customers still stuck with high bills after the other adjustments can seek what is known as a leak balance remaining adjustment, which is designed to address the remaining excess charges. Turner said another reform will lower the cutoff for that adjustment from $2,000 in excess charges to $1,000 for most customers.
Another change: Customers seeking an unusually large bill adjustment will be on the hook for 125 percent of their average water usage as opposed to the existing 150 percent.
Public Works would be able to reduce customers’ bills for an “exceptional circumstances” adjustment, by up to $10,000 instead of the current $4,000 maximum reduction.
Rounding out the proposed changes are a 50-cent discount for customers who use electronic billing; an option for customers who do not take water to have their meters locked instead of seeking out expensive private plumbers to cap a line; and a prohibition on customers receiving higher, corrected bills after three months.
Political pressure
The last change had been sought by three city councilmembers, who last month joined together to put the proposal on the City Council agenda, marking the first use of a new power approved by voters in the Nov. 7 election.
Both candidates running to replace Turner in Saturday’s election, state Sen. John Whitmire and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, recently promised changes at the Department of Public Works if they are elected.
“The water department. It is broken. We need to do a complete landscape oversee,” said Jackson Lee, who has been endorsed by Turner.
Turner said Monday that his administration had been working on the changes for months, well before the heat began turning up on the issue. He also said he welcomed the input from the three councilmembers – Amy Peck, Mary Nan Huffman and Carolyn Evans-Shabazz – the latter of whom joined him at a City Hall press conference.
The council members did not immediately return requests for comment Monday.
Turner said there were several issues the administration had to work through before it could present the package to City Council. The city had to determine all the changes that would be required to address common customer concerns, whether they would have a meaningful impact on the city budget and whether they would violate bond covenants, he said.
The changes Turner is proposing can be implemented immediately, according to Department of Public Works Director Carol Haddock.
The reform package does not include tweaks to the city’s water bill appeals process, another frequent source of complaints. However, Turner said that increasing flexibility at the customer-service level will avert many appeals in the first place while giving the water adjustment board more leeway.
“Everybody was stuck,” Turner said. “With the change of these ordinances, now the appellate process will have even greater meaning.”
Relief still may elude the many customers who already have struggled with high water bills. Turner said it would be impractical for the city to try to correct issues from the past
“I think that would be very, very difficult to do to try to go back. I regret that,” Turner said. “As soon as City Council votes on Wednesday, we can immediately effectuate a much more favorable environment for the customers.”
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