County studies potable irrigation meters, recommends further rate-study work before installing meters

Utilities staff presented two broad options to address sewer bills for residents who irrigate lawns with potable water: change the rate structure to rebalance sewer charges, or install separate potable irrigation meters that exclude irrigation water from sewer billing.

Jeremy Wall, utility staff, explained how the county caps sewer charges by charging sewer on the first 10,000 gallons of potable water usage and then not increasing sewer fees beyond that cap for higher irrigation users. He said the county’s historical per-capita estimate is about 83 gallons per person per day and that reclaimed water is available to roughly 17,000 customers. On costs, Jeremy said a single potable-irrigation meter install “essentially comes down to about a $3,000 install cost,” and that at that price a customer’s payback could be about six years; widespread meter adoption could remove several million dollars from sewer revenue and would require offsetting changes to rates or budgets.

Jeremy recommended delaying a programmatic irrigation-meter rollout until the utility completes new rate-study work and a machine-learning analysis of AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) data, which staff are building to estimate household occupancy and irrigation patterns more precisely. Commissioners generally supported further study and asked staff to return during the rate-study timeline with refined models and consumer-facing payback calculators.