As the result of several listserv questions, the previous Utility Information Pipeline included a poll asking which services utilities offer leak adjustments for.

Poll results

Overwhelmingly, the poll results indicate that most of the utilities who responded offer leak adjustments for both water and sewer.

Here are the original results of the poll:

Water only

Initially, the eight responses of water only seemed surprising. However, when I looked into who clicked on the poll link in the last newsletter (I can see who clicked the link, but I can’t tell what their response was to the poll, or if they even took the poll), several of those people work for water only utilities. So I have a strong suspicion that most, if not all, of the water only responses don’t mean they offer water, but not sewer, leak adjustments – rather they don’t provide sewer, therefore they offer leak adjustments for water only.

Sewer only

I was rather surprised that only three (less than 10 percent) of the responses only offer sewer adjustments. I honestly expected this number to be much larger.

As discussed in the previous newsletter, water leak adjustments directly impact the utility’s bottom line, whereas sewer adjustments for leaks that do not enter the sewer system do not. For this reason, I anticipated more sewer only responses.

No leak adjustments

The three responses here was not a surprise. Some utilities take the hard-line approach that all water that passes through the meter is the customer’s responsibility, regardless if there was a leak or not.

Comments

Three people who participated in the poll left comments describing their leak adjustment policies. If you are interested in seeing these comments, please click here.

Follow-up poll

My curiosity was piqued with so many utilities offering water leak adjustments, so I’ve created another poll to see if the credit is calculated at full retail price or some lesser rate, such as wholesale cost.

If you offer water leak adjustments, please click here to take the quick poll. Once you’ve taken the poll, you can view the results to see how other utilities responded. I’ll publish the results in the next issue.

Are you considering adopting or updating your leak adjustment policy?

Are you considering adopting a leak adjustment policy or updating an existing one? If you have questions about leak adjustment policies, or any other policies, please give me a call at 919-673-4050, or email me at gsanders@edmundsgovtech.com to see how a business review could benefit your utility.