Should Wistmore Install Hourly-Reading Water Meters?

Resolution: "The Wistmore Water District should replace its manual-read water meters with meters that record hourly use and transmit it automatically to the district."

Background: The fictional Wistmore Water District serves about 6,800 connections. Its meters are read by two employees who walk routes every other month. When a meter cannot be reached, because of a locked gate or a dog in the yard, the district estimates the bill and corrects it at the next reading. An hourly-reporting meter, sometimes called an advanced meter, records use every hour and sends the record over a radio signal to the district several times a day. The district would keep that record and would offer customers an account where they could see their own use.

The district's board has heard from residents on both sides. Some want the leak alerts. Some object to the district holding an hourly record of what happens in their homes. The board has not decided, and the change would require a rate increase to pay for it.

Roles: Assign an affirmative team arguing for the replacement, a negative team arguing against it, a moderator who keeps time and enforces speaking order, and three judges who score with the rubric below. Each team prepares an opening claim of three minutes, one cross-examination question per speaker, a rebuttal of two minutes, and a closing of two minutes. Judges may not speak during the rounds and must record one piece of evidence per speech.

Every point below is available to both teams. Points drawn from the fictional Wistmore scenario are labeled as such. Points drawn from published sources name the source.

Case for hourly-reading meters (affirmative)

• Household leaks waste an average of nearly 9,400 gallons a year, and most of that water escapes from fixtures nobody is watching, such as a toilet flapper or an irrigation line. An hourly record shows continuous flow at three in the morning, which is the clearest signal a leak exists. Source: EPA WaterSense, Fix a Leak Week materials.
• The average American household uses about 300 gallons of water per day, roughly seventy percent of it indoors. A customer who can see which hours carry that use has something to act on, while a bill that arrives every other month gives a total and nothing else. Source: EPA WaterSense.
• Estimated bills would end. In the fictional Wistmore scenario, the district issued 412 estimated bills last year because meters could not be reached, and each one had to be corrected later, which generates complaints and staff time.
• Water and sewer bills rose about 24 percent nationally between 2019 and 2024, outpacing inflation. An affirmative team can argue that a district facing rising costs cannot afford to keep losing unbilled water it never detects. Source: Bluefield Research and industry rate surveys.
• The district finds its own leaks faster. In the fictional scenario, a main leak in the Halloway Lane zone ran for five months before a resident reported wet ground, and hourly data from the meters on that street would have shown the imbalance within days.
• Meter readers can be reassigned rather than laid off. In the fictional scenario, the district's general manager has proposed moving both readers into the maintenance crew, where two positions are open.

Case against hourly-reading meters (negative)

• An hourly record of water use is a record of when people are home. It shows the hour a household wakes, the days it is away, and whether anyone is in the house at all. A fictional ratepayer group in Wistmore, the Wistmore Customers Alliance, argues that the district has no policy governing who may see that record or how long it is kept.
• The district would hold data it can be compelled to hand over. The alliance points out that the district has never had to answer a subpoena for consumption records, because until now it has held only a bimonthly total.
• The cost falls on every customer. In the fictional scenario, the replacement would cost about $2.1 million and would raise the average monthly bill by about $3.40 for ten years, including for households that do not use the online account.
• Electronic meters have a shorter service life than mechanical ones. In the fictional scenario, the manufacturer warrants the battery for fifteen years, while the mechanical meters now in the ground have averaged twenty-six years in service.
• Leak alerts can misfire. In the fictional scenario, a neighboring district reported that a quarter of its first-year alerts turned out to be irrigation timers working as intended, and customers who received several false alerts began ignoring them.
• The benefit is unevenly distributed. A leak alert helps a homeowner who can call a plumber. A renter who receives the same alert must persuade a landlord to act, and in the fictional scenario about a third of Wistmore's connections serve rental property.