Customer Care

The City of Calgary owns, operates and maintains the Water Utility, including the meters and water infrastructure, such as pipes and water treatment plants.

The City, as owner and operator, establishes all customer water rates in Calgary, as well as the policies and procedures for administering these rates, including the policies and procedures in place for rare circumstances involving abnormally high consumption.

The City contracts ENMAX to provide billing and customer care services for City of Calgary Water Utility customers.

ENMAX reads the water meters, produces the bills and provides customer care services on The City’s behalf. One hundred per cent of the fees for water services collected by ENMAX are sent directly to The City, and ENMAX carries out its services in accordance with The City’s rates, policies and procedures.

The City contracts with ENMAX to read the meters, produce the bills and provide customer care service on The City's behalf. If you have questions about your water bill, please call ENMAX as soon as possible at 310-2010 or 1-877-571-7111 (Outside Alberta).

The City will continue to have a program in place to assist in situations where customers incur abnormally high bills related to unintentional water consumption. A customer service representative will work with each customer who shares concerns about abnormal bills.

Customers are supported with The City’s high consumption checklist and are often able to identify the cause of their abnormal water consumption. If the cause cannot be found, The City moves into a more extensive investigation, which includes sending professionally-trained technicians to troubleshoot for the cause and checking the water meter is part of that process.

The City uses water meters that meet industry standards. To certify the meter's accuracy, all meters are tested by the manufacturer at three different flow rates prior to distribution to The City. 

The City is one of the only municipalities in Canada to also own a state-of-the-art Water Meter Test Bench manufactured by MARS Company, an industry leader in meter testing technology.

Water meters are mechanical devices – water needs to pass through the meter in order to record use. In rare cases, meters can register slightly higher volumes at certain flows than what is flowing through.

In that rare event, the increase would be negligible.  It is much more likely for a meter to register lower than actual water consumption, as water meters tend to slow down as they age. This would result in a lower bill for the customer, not higher. Also, in this case it would not likely be a one-month error but rather show as a pattern.