In order to apply the user-pays principle, the City of Montreal intends to start pricing the water of businesses and industries according to their consumption as of the year 2024, learned The duty. In the meantime, starting next year, it will send businesses a “blank bill” that will allow them to measure the extent of their water use.
The City has been considering moving forward with volumetric water pricing for the non-residential sector for years. In the wake of the water meter saga, at the end of the 2000s, Montreal had installed more than 20,000 water meters in industries, businesses and institutions (ICI).
Large companies such as Molson, Lantic and Saputo are already billed according to their water consumption. But the other companies had never been charged for the data collected by the water meters and instead paid a water tax calculated according to the land value of their property.
Project delayed
The City had first announced that it would send out a blank bill in 2021, but the project had to be postponed due to the pandemic. This information will finally be sent to the ICI towards the end of January 2023 and will allow these companies to be aware of the bill that they will be likely to pay from 2024. Excessive water consumption could encourage them to take measures to reduce their consumption or carry out repairs if, for example, the data suggests that a leak is the cause of excessive water use.
For example, the City found that a restaurant on Saint-Hubert Street consumed one liter of water per second continuously 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which is considered excessive. The blank invoice should encourage the company to make the necessary corrections.
The City wishes to promote behavioral changes among companies that consume more than 10,000 m3 of water per year. This category represents 12% of businesses, but it is responsible for 75% of the water produced in Montreal.
Volumetric pricing will not apply to small businesses that consume less than 1000m3 per year, or one million litres. This category includes nearly 54% of non-residential buildings that have a water meter. For others, the rates will vary according to different thresholds. Thus, for water consumption ranging from 1000 m3 within 10,000m3the price will be set at $0.10 per m3 of water. It will climb to $0.20 for consumption between 10,000 and 100,000 m3and $0.60 for more than 100,000 m3.
Changing behaviors
According to the information obtained, this eco-taxation measure will be included in the 2023 budget that the City will unveil on Tuesday. Revenues related to this billing are estimated at 15 million for 2023, an amount which will be reflected in the bill to be paid that the ICI will receive in 2024 for their consumption of the previous year. The measure, says a source at City Hall, is more about changing behavior and better reflecting water consumption than cashing in extra revenue.
The president of the executive committee and responsible for finances, Dominique Ollivier, did not want to comment on the file because of the 2023 budget which she must file on Tuesday.
Remember that in Montreal, the vast majority of homes do not have water meters. And the City does not plan to install these devices for the residential sector. In 2017, Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission recommended that Montreal follow in the footsteps of other Canadian municipalities and install meters in homes. However, this idea was rejected by the Coderre administration, then by that of Valérie Plante.
Still, Montrealers remain major consumers of water. In 2020, the urban area’s drinking water production reached 552 million m3, which represents the equivalent of 729 liters per person per day, indicated the 2020 report on water use published last year. This is still a decrease of 3% compared to 2019.
It should be noted, however, that a little over a quarter of the water produced by Montreal’s water filtration plants, or 26.2%, is lost due to leaks in the aqueduct network, which corresponds to approximately 361 million liters per day.