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Commissioner to model flow-based sewer billing using six years of Onset Water data
Summary
A commissioner reported receiving six years of flow data from Onset Water and will begin modeling a flow-based billing system for nonresidential customers, noting additional Wareham water-department data (parcel IDs and industrial breakdown) will be needed to finalize a revenue-neutral approach.
A commissioner reported that Onset Water supplied six years of water-flow data and a categorized spreadsheet that will allow the board to model a sewer-billing structure based on actual water flow rather than equivalent dwelling units (EDUs) for nonresidential customers.
The commissioner said Onset’s dataset includes ten customer categories (residential, mobile-home park, schools, commercial, restaurants, hotels, municipal, daycare, gas stations and others) but lacks a detailed industrial breakdown that Wareham will need to incorporate. The commissioner offered to de-identify the data and share it with other board members for model development.
Board members asked whether the Onset data includes parcel IDs and meter numbers; staff said address and meter numbers are present and will check whether parcel IDs are included so the data can be cross-referenced with assessor records. Commissioners requested that the town water department data be provided to complete the revenue-neutral modeling for nonresidential customers.
No formal action was taken, but board members directed staff to obtain Wareham’s water-department flow/parcel data and to share de-identified datasets for modeling.
