Billing issues plague Libby water users

The crumbling infrastructure isn’t the only problem facing Libby’s municipal water system. Analysis of several customers’ bills reveals startling inconsistencies in how the city manages its water utility.

The City Council approved a rate increase for the water utility in November 2014. The base rate for residential water customers inside city limits jumped from $33 to $45.25 per month. The base rate for residential customers outside city limits jumped to $56.60. 

To soften the blow, Libby Mayor Doug Roll committed to providing $200,000 per year in additional funding from the city to the water department, which would result in a credit of $9.40 per month on each user’s bill. Those funds are a reallocation of the annual payments made to the city from the International Paper lawsuit settlement, and are renewed in 10-year increments by the parties in the suit. The credit is at the discretion of the City Council, however, and is not guaranteed to the city water customers in the future.

The credit lies at the heart of the billing issues observed in recent months.

According to Jackie Powell, the city’s utility billing clerk, there was an error with the billing software that resulted in the credit being dropped from the bills of customers who don’t have city sewer service as a part of their monthly bill. That omission was for the month of February, but was, according to Powell, made up in the March billing as those customers were given a credit of $18.80.

The reviewed bills, however, paint a much different picture from Powell’s interpretation.

Of the 13 accounts reviewed, not a single customer received the promised credit on their January bill, for December’s water use. Of the February bills reviewed, for January’s service dates, the credit was applied on only one and labeled as “overpayment.”

March’s bills show some with the $9.40 credit, some with the $18.80 make-up credit and some with no credit whatsoever. In one case, a credit of $8.73 was applied, with no explanation.

Powell said she was unable to say with certainty how the $8.73 credit happened, but suggested that it could have been the result of the customer having a previous balance of $.67, which offset the credit. The customer’s bill, however, showed it 

was completely current, with no past-due balance. Other customers, who did receive the credit in March and had a past-due balance, still showed the full $9.40 on the credit line item of their bill, alongside the past-due balance.

The inconsistencies demonstrated in the application of the bill credit aren’t the only issues with water billing in Libby. Other customers have received bills that are mathematically incorrect.

One multiple-unit residence was billed $148.70 for water use between Jan. 6 and Feb. 3. Based upon the billed usage of 13,800 for the month, the water bill should have been $85.91.

Powell explained the water billing formula. For in-city residential accounts, the base rate is $45.25 per month. Usage is billed at $2.96 per thousand gallons. Gallons used outside the thousand gallon increments are billed at $.297 per hundred gallons.

The property in question, then, should have been billed $45.25 plus $38.28, for 13,000 gallons, plus $2.38, for 800 gallons, totaling $85.91.

There is a slight cost difference for commercial customers, as the base rate is $56.37 but the usage rates remain the same, according to Powell. If the property was billed under commercial rates, the difference of $12.12 in the base rate would result in a correct billing of $97.23, still far short of the actual bill of $148.70.

Similar inconsistencies exist in other accounts. One in-city commercial customer was billed $99.88 for 14,700 gallons of water used between Feb. 2 and March 2, which is mathematically correct, but the $9.40 credit was not given on the bill. The same customer used 600 fewer gallons between March 2 and April 1, but was bill $107.51, and again the $9.40 credit was not applied to the bill.

For city water customers, the only point of recourse is city hall.

Justin Kraske, chief counsel and administrator of the Montana Public Service Commission, said there is no agency with oversight authority regarding city-run municipal water utilities.

“There’s really no oversight besides the city itself,” he said.

While he said his agency has received complaints from various municipal water customers across the state, the only points of reference he can provide are the respective city councils and mayors or state legislators.

Libby City Councilman Brent Teske chairs the city’s water and sewer committee. He said he was recently contacted about the issues and was beginning his own investigation.

“The biggest complaint is the consistency,” Teske said. “If you use the same amount of water every month your bill should be the same every month.”

Roll said he had not been informed of any issues with the water billing, other than the missing credit for some users in the month of February, which he also believed had been rectified.

“I need to hear about the problems so I can fix them,” he said. “And I don’t want to read about them in the newspaper.”

Teske said he is committed to a more proactive approach to the problem.

He wants to identify customers with problems and conduct a thorough investigation into their billing and usage history.

“I need to go into accounts and look at what they’ve used and what they’ve been billed for,” he said. “So we can get a handle on this.”

The billing issues come in the wake of other problems related to the city’s water utility that have cropped up in recent months. One such problem is the city’s inability to account for all of the water in the system.

The Libby Water Treatment Plant reported treating in excess of 33 million gallons of water in March, water that flows into Libby’s municipal system. Of that water, however, only slightly more than 6.2 million gallons were billed to city water customers.

Roll and Pape both said the numbers provided by the water plant are estimates, not accurate measurements of the water entering the city system. 

In order to accurately measure the water, Pape said, the city needs to meter the water coming into the city system from the plant.

 There are two points from which water is pushed out of the plant and into the city. The main portion of the city is fed through the pressure reducing station on Cedar Street, but a second line also leaves the plant and provides service to customers in the Cabinet Heights area of the city.

Pape said the city has ordered a $12,000 probe meter, which will be installed in the pressure reducing station to accurately measure the amount of water being pushed into the city from that pipe.

There are, however, no publicly released plans to add a meter to the second pipe that feeds the Cabinet Heights area.

Teske said the first he’d heard of the probe meter was when he read the story in The Western News last week.

“They must have had the funds in a budget item somewhere,” he said. “They didn’t run it through the water and sewer committee or the City Council.”

Without accurate measurements it is not only impossible to know how much water is lost by the city’s crumbling infrastructure, but also impossible to know how much comes into the city through the Cedar Street station and how much is routed through Cabinet Heights, other than the water billed to city customers.