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).

We recognize that it is difficult for customers to receive an abnormally high water bill, and therefore, The City has changed its bill adjustment policies and procedures to support customers experiencing this situation. The City and ENMAX will continue to work with individual customers that have abnormally high bills related to unintentional water consumption. The first step is to support the customer to work through The City’s high consumption checklist. Customers are often able to identify the cause of their abnormal water consumption by completing the checklist. If the cause cannot be found, ENMAX and The City move into a more extensive investigation which includes a review of the billing processes and the dispatch of professionally-trained technicians to inspect and check the customer’s water meter to ensure it is working correctly.

If a customer receives a water bill equal to or greater than three times their average, monthly use for that season, they should call The City’s billing service provider, ENMAX, as soon as possible. Once the issue is determined and fixed, the bill will be reduced to reflect the customer’s seasonal average water use, plus the basic services charges for water, wastewater and drainage. This reduction will occur for up to two billing cycles (approximately 60 days), providing sufficient time to identify and repair the issue.

The City will review bill adjustments related to abnormal water consumption made since April 7, 2016 (the last update to the billing adjustment process) to determine if those historically high bills meet the new criteria. An abnormally high bill is defined as equal to or greater than three times your average, monthly water use for that season. If further adjustments are required to align with the new process then you will be contacted.

We know that customers must be able to trust that their water consumption is accurately captured by their meter and reflected on their bills. Both the meters and billing system are extensively and regularly tested both as part of regular business practice, and through troubleshooting with a customer if they receive an abnormally high bill. There are no indications of irregularities in the billing or metering processes resulting in an increase in abnormally high consumption bills.

To provide customer assurance, The City and ENMAX are conducting independent assessments of billing and metering processes to further validate their accuracy.

The City and ENMAX will continue to work with individual customers that have abnormally high bills related to unintentional water consumption. The first step is to support the customer to work through The City’s high consumption checklist. Customers are often able to identify the cause of their abnormal water consumption by completing the checklist. If the cause cannot be found, ENMAX and The City move into a more extensive investigation which includes a review of the billing processes and the dispatch of professionally-trained technicians to inspect and check the customer’s water meter to ensure it is working correctly.

This audit of City of Calgary Water Utility billing processes was part of the City Auditor's Office annual audit plan approved in November 2016 and isn't related to recent water customer inquiries involving unexpected high consumption situations.

The Water Utility has agreed to all recommendations and committed to implementing the recommendations in 2018.

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.

​There are a number of reasons a meter may be replaced. For example, The City often uses the opportunity of being on site to replace a customer's meter as part of a program to update older water meters. The City has an ongoing meter life cycle replacement program to update older water meters that have reached the end of their life cycle with newer and more efficient meters that are equipped with new technology that allows them to be read by a portable device at a distance. In other examples, if a meter is removed for testing, in order to ensure billing can continue, a new meter is installed. This replacement did not mean there is any error on the part of the removed meter.

The most common cause of large increases in water consumption are leaks in the home. The most common sources of large increases in water consumption are outlined in the following chart:

Checking for leaks in and around your home will help ensure that you aren’t unintentionally consuming water.

Visit Water Leaks and Basic Repairs for ways that you can save water. There are even more tips and ideas on how to save water around your home on The City's Water Conservation page.

About 99.5 per cent of our over 350,000 customers receive monthly bills that reflect regular water consumption within their average range. Each month, there are approximately less than one half of one per cent of all customers whose consumption differs significantly from their historical usage.

Most are able to identify the cause of their increase in consumption and can attribute it to obvious causes like a hot tub, leaking irrigation system, a burst pipe or a water heater.

No, we have not seen an increase in incidents of abnormally high water consumption.

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.

Your meter is typically located in the basement where your water service enters the home. The meter has numbers (looks similar to an odometer on a car) and a dial called a flow register. The dial and numbers shows water consumption. Visit The City's How to read a water meter page for more information.

It's easy to check if your meter is registering flow: have someone turn water on in the house, and watch as the flow register turns and registers consumption.

If the flow register is turning and all fixtures are off, this could indicate that you have a leak.

Visit Water Leaks and Basic Repairs to help troubleshoot the cause.

Most water meters (almost 90 per cent of homes) are electronically read for billing purposes by a meter reader.

Meter readings are taken monthly.  Water readings are electronically sent directly to the meter reader's device so that no one has to enter the home. Water meters are installed just above the main water shut-off valve in the home. This is usually in the basement and is located on a pipe that comes out of the basement floor.

The remaining residential meters are read manually by a meter reader and recorded. These manual read-outs located on the outside of the home, are being replaced by electronic readings as part of a meter replacement program.

Readings are obtained from 99 per cent of the meters. The other one per cent of time, The City doesn't receive a transmission (i.e. no reading) so the customer is billed based on historical usage. The next time the meter reader is able to pick up a transmission, the bill is updated with the actual past reading. There may be some minor adjustments in order to reconcile the difference.