Metro Vancouver urges water meters, but metering the city could cost $20-million, PoCo estimates

Until the meters are running, water will be wasted.

That was the message from Metro Vancouver, as the regional authority recently published a report recommending municipalities amp up their water metering and pinpoint leaky pipes.

“The first thing metering does is it enables the member jurisdiction to address that leakage,” said Linda Parkinson, Metro Vancouver’s director of policy, planning and analysis.

Fifty-two percent of the region’s water use is unmetered. Metro Vancouver estimates that system leakage is at least 12 percent, based on cities self-reports. But Parkinson said she suspects it could be closer to 20 percent, which is what the City of Vancouver recently reported due to the age of its water system and metering status.

However, the cost of water metering can be prohibitive.

Both Port Moody and Coquitlam now require new builds to have water meters — something that Parkinson calls “a very quick win,” since usually the developer pays for it and it is done during construction.

“But there’s a huge amount of existing single family stock. It’s not a viable plan to wait for the turnover of all the housing in the region.”

This is where the challenge — and cost — comes in. A water meter needs to be housed in a chamber, and needs professionals to install.

“You need to mobilize a construction crew, you need to get out onto the street. You need to dig a hole to put a meter chamber in, like the meter needs to be housed in a chamber. So there’s a cost to that,” said Parkinson.

In an email sent to Dispatch, Haydn Knowles-Love, Port Coquitlam’s manager of utilities, estimated that the city would have to install around 10,000 metres to fully meter the city, which would cost $20 million and take several years to complete.

“The city believes water metering can be part of the solution and should be viewed in that light but it has to be balanced with the upfront and ongoing costs of maintenance and management,” Knowles-Love wrote.

Jonathan Helmus, the director of utilities for the City of Coquitlam, told the Dispatch in an interview that it costs about $3,000 to install a meter per single family home.

Parkinson understands that this capital cost is the biggest barrier for cities.

“But you have to look at that and weigh it against the up to 20 percent in water savings that you can achieve,” she said. “And then the biggest win you get there is that you can go to service the growing population.”

Metro Vancouver is a fast growing region, Parkinson explained, and if it doesn’t reduce the per capita amount of water everybody uses, “we need to build bigger and bigger infrastructure” to accommodate the additional people.

Other water management strategies

Helmus said Coquitlam strives to keep its residential water consumption low with other methods. In 2021, it was 201 litres per person per day, which is relatively low in comparison to other cities.

He said it is because of its water conservation program (that includes education) and some enforcement. For example, lawn watering is permitted just one day a week from May to September.

Coquitlam also has a proactive leak detection program. Late at night, when there’s limited water use, they listen to the system for sounds that might indicate a leak so that they can either fix it or let residents know.

Port Coquitlam manages its water demand by fixing water main breaks, letting residents know if there’s a leak on their property, replacing older water mains, water pressure management, raising awareness and “can levy fines” if necessary, according to Knowles-Love.

“Acknowledging the environmental benefits and accepted need for water conservation for the generations to come, it should be noted that the financial benefits of water metering are long term in nature and the ‘one size fits all’ solution may affect the smaller municipalities disproportionately with fewer residents to take on the costs which inevitably come with water metering,” he wrote.

Port Moody did not supply Metro Vancouver with this data, but told the Dispatch in an email that it meters institutional, commercial and industrial water services (the Metro Vancouver report focuses on residential use).

Fighting flat

Once a city is fully metered, it can start charging residents for water with a pay by use rate, instead of the commonly used flat rate system. For example, in Port Moody, the flat rate for water in 2025 for single-family home is $643, in Coquitlam it is $699, and in Port Coquitlam it is $585.

“So across most of the region, whether you have a house with two toilets and no lawn, or you have a house with four bathrooms, a swimming pool, a hot tub, a big lawn, you’re paying the same flat rate of water,” said Parkinson.

In North American jurisdictions that have installed universal metering, they’ve seen an average 20 per cent reduction in the amount of water used per person, she said.

Factors that go into residential water demand

While population growth is an important factor in drinking water demand, how a jurisdiction develops also matters.

Multi-family buildings use less water than single-family homes, because they tend to be newer builds — with things like low flush toilets — and dwellers don’t all individually have a lawn and garden they water in the summer.

Municipalities with higher income levels also tend to use more water than those with lower. West Vancouver, for example, is fully metered, but still has high residential water usage.

Parkinson also cautioned that total water consumption statistics can be misleading, since it captures both residential and business use. For example, cities that have a large agriculture industry therefore likely have higher water use.

“Because the total consumption is all the water sold by Metro Vancouver divided by the population. And the challenge with that is it’s capturing both the residential and the business use,” she said.

Metro Vancouver estimates that residential use accounts for 65 per cent of water use in the region. In 2023, per capita consumption for the region in its entirety was 379 litres per day, but the residential demand is estimated at 246 litres per day.