Etobicoke resident Dawn Millar is frustrated.
After receiving an estimated water bill every other billing cycle for the past year, Millar said she received a letter in the mail saying her data transmitter was being replaced and she now has to send the city her meter readings.
This situation left Millar confused and upset that the responsibility to submit water readings now fell on her unless she wanted to continue to get estimated readings, she said.
“I find it annoying and inconvenient that this type of thing is happening, they clearly have known about it for a while,” Millar said. “From what I understand, these were supposed to last much longer than they did.”
Starting in April 2026, the City of Toronto will begin a three-year program to replace about 470,000 water meter transmission units, or MTUs.
An MTU is the device that sends water usage data to the city for billing. While the water meters themselves still work, many transmission units have failed, preventing automatic readings.
The City sent out a news release that said the failure was related to batteries inside the MTUs, despite the transmitters being supposed to last 20 years.
The City refused an interview with Humber Et Cetera but replied in an email that customers could submit manual water meter readings through the City’s online portal or call 311 and select option ‘1’ when prompted.
Millar said she works full-time and has children, so remembering to submit a water reading is not a fair and realistic request.
“You’re being tasked with something, and it’s not your fault,” she said. “With life being so expensive, and then their solution is just, “well, you can either submit a metre reading, otherwise we'll just guess it,” Millar said.
“It's frustrating, because my salary doesn't go up, but the amount of my bills do every year,” she said. “Then I have to do more or pay somebody else to do more.”
The City said in its email response that it uses the estimate of the resident’s past water usages and any differences between estimated and actual consumption will be reconciled once a reading is received, or the MTU is replaced.
“I'm irritated about potentially being overcharged, which I feel like I might be. If I'm being undercharged on the other side of that, for the next three years, I don't want to have to owe them money at the end of the day,” she said.
Millar said it shouldn’t be her responsibility; it is the City’s problem.
Dr. Darko Joksimovic, a civil engineering professor at TMU who specializes in urban water systems, said the expected battery life of many sensors, including smart water meters “has not lived up to the expectations and initial claims.”
He said as a Toronto resident, the meter in his house had reported unrealistically high readings in September 2024.
He contacted 311 and got a visit that fixed the issue several months later, he said.
The City said the issues had been popping up since 2023 and the program is a temporary fix while Toronto prepares to transition to a newer smart meter system later this decade.
