The Honolulu Board of Water Supply recognizes there are customers who are concerned about the billing charge that is assessed with each water bill.

The move to a monthly billing system from the bimonthly system means that for most customers, over the course of a year, the cost of that charge has doubled.

This increase was necessary to cover both existing and new expenses related to the maintenance, repair or replacement of customer meters, the remote meter-reading system and the hardware and software required for billing.

Ernest Y.W. Lau is manager
and chief engineer of the
Honolulu Board of Water Supply.

As our equipment and systems aged, maintenance and repair became problematic and expensive, making replacement an unavoidable option.

The meters and meter-reading system was installed more than 10 years ago, while the previous customer information system (CIS), which was retired in January, was two decades old. The majority of the additional funds resulting from changing the frequency of mailing bills from bimonthly (with a billing charge of $7.02, totaling $42.12 per year) to monthly (with a billing charge of $7.02, totaling $84.24 per year) would pay for these new expenses:

» A new billing system, or CIS, that cost $14 million.

» CIS maintenance and upgrades averaging about $1 million annually.

» Online bill payment expenses of about $600,000 annually.

» Lock-box services of about $170,000 annually.

» Automatic meter reading (AMR) battery replacements of about $1.2 million annually.

» AMR transmitter replacements of about $4 million annually.

» Meter replacements of about $1 million annually.

Within the state, the water board fares comparably with the other utilities’ monthly "billing charge" or "customer charge": Hawaiian Electric, $9; Hawaii Gas, $8.50; Maui Department of Water, $11.25; Kauai Department of Water, $12; and Hawaii Department of Water Supply, $15.

On a national level, the Board of Water Suppy also fares comparably with other utilities’ monthly "billing charge" or "customer charge": Seattle, $13.25; San Francisco, $7.90; San Diego, $19.33; San Jose, $8.95; Philadelphia, $6.37; and Detroit, $5.28.

The switch to monthly billing also provides more timely information that is in line with other local utilities, a more-manageable bill, and more frequent consumption data to allow customers to make adjustments in water use and identify unusual water usage, which could be due to undetected property leaks. This would allow for prompt repairs, thereby reducing the magnitude of a high bill caused by leaks.

Replacing customer meters, the current meter-reading system and previ- ous CIS not only improves our efficiency, but more importantly, it ensures our ability to bill for and collect revenue from the water our customers use.

This revenue is essential to fund our water systems operations, maintenance, and water source development and sustainability.

Any reductions to this charge would result in a revenue shortfall that would affect the board’s ability to provide customers with safe and reliable access to the water supply.

Since every board employee, myself included, is a customer paying exactly the same rates as every other customer on Oahu, we do not look forward to increasing costs. In fact, we look to avoid it as much as possible. However, our bottom line is not reducing expenses to the detriment of our customer.

The board’s bottom line is to ensure that when our customers turn the faucet on — today, tomorrow or a hundred years from now — high-quality and safe drinking water will still be provided at a reasonable and affordable cost.