• Black Nova Scotia
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Health
    • COVID
  • Investigation
  • Journalism
  • Labour
  • Policing
  • Politics
    • City Hall
    • Elections
    • Province House
  • Profiles
  • Transit
  • Women
  • Morning File
  • Commentary
  • PRICED OUT
  • @Tim_Bousquet
  • Log In

Halifax Examiner

An independent, adversarial news site in Halifax, NS

  • Home
  • About
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Commenting policy
  • Archives
  • Contact us
  • Subscribe
    • Gift Subscriptions
  • Donate
  • Swag
  • Receipts
  • Manage your account: update card / change level / cancel
You are here: Home / City Hall / Halifax woman loses UARB appeal over $2,500 water bill: “It’s preposterous”

Halifax woman loses UARB appeal over $2,500 water bill: “It’s preposterous”

January 11, 2021 By Zane Woodford 7 Comments

Allie Fineberg’s bill for $2,526.04 for three months of water usage. — Screenshot: UARB

A Halifax woman is vowing to continue fighting an exorbitant water bill after losing an appeal before the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (UARB).

In a written decision last week, the UARB ruled Halifax Water had followed its regulations when it billed Allie Fineberg $2,526.04, alleging she used 18,000 litres of water per day for seven weeks. That’s more than 100 times her typical consumption, enough to fill a four-foot deep pool 15 feet in diameter every day.

“To put this daily average use in context … the Board calculates that if your outdoor faucet were left fully open, it would take nearly 4 hours for 18,000 litres of water to flow through your water meter,” board member Stephen McGrath wrote in the decision, addressed to Fineberg.

“Your measured water consumption spiked during this period for no apparent reason. The evidence provided to the Board in this proceeding does not identify a clear reason for your water consumption to have suddenly increased and then suddenly stopped.”

Fineberg, the owner of clothing store Allie’s Boutique, lives alone and doesn’t own a dishwasher or even a washing machine. She got the $2,500 bill, covering 90 days of water usage, in January 2020. A month earlier, in December 2019, the utility notified her of a spike in her water consumption.

Typically, Fineberg uses a little more than 100 litres per day and her bill is well under $200. For seven weeks, from the end of October to mid-December, Halifax Water’s meter indicated she was using 18,000 litres per day. The day after a meter read on Dec. 13, 2019, Fineberg’s usage dropped back down to normal rates.

Fineberg hired multiple plumbers, none of whom could find a leak or any explanation for the spike, let alone for the consumption returning to normal on its own.

“In my professional opinion, I do not think 10,000 litres a day of water is being used on these premises, or even close,” wrote one plumber.

A plumber told Fineberg he didn’t think 10,000 litres of water could’ve been used daily on the property, “or even close.” — Screenshot: Allie Fineberg/UARB

Fineberg complained to Halifax Water and the utility tested its meter, finding it was accurate. The utility’s dispute resolution officer ordered her to pay the bill, albeit in installments, giving her 30 days to appeal the decision.

Fineberg appealed the decision to the UARB on June 2, after the 30 days, but as the Halifax Examiner reported in June, the UARB agreed to hear the appeal anyway, based on the “extraordinarily high” bill.

The UARB conducted a paper hearing, with some disputed facts getting sorted out. For instance, the earlier decision allowing the appeal pegged the alleged water usage at less than 10,000 litres per day. Evidence provided shows the average to be 18,000 litres per day.

Fineberg had also stated before that her new “Advanced Metering Infrastructure” water meter, also known as a smart meter, was installed in October 2019, just weeks before the usage spike. But Halifax Water was able to prove it had in fact been installed a year before, in October 2018.

On Jan. 4, the UARB released its decision, ruling that Halifax Water followed its regulations in billing Fineberg for the water. Board member McGrath wrote:

From the evidence before it, the Board cannot conclude that your water usage was erroneously measured or billed. In many cases in the past the Board has dismissed complaints about the overbilling of water rates based on the accuracy of the meter and the design of the meters that requires water to physically flow through them to record usage. Although this case is unusual because the measured consumption is so high, the Board declines to infer from the circumstances that the probable cause for the high measurement was that the meter was faulty and inexplicably started to record significant water usage and then fixed itself before it was tested.

Given the testing conducted demonstrated that your meter was accurate and, in the absence of enough evidence to suggest that the meter readings were incorrect to any material degree, the Board concludes Halifax Water billed appropriately for water consumption. How the water is consumed beyond the meter is not within the scope of the Board’s jurisdiction, nor is it Halifax Water’s responsibility.

After reviewing the decision, Fineberg isn’t satisfied.

“I’m feeling like nobody’s got any common sense,” Fineberg said in an interview Monday.

“I certainly know for a fact that I did not go through a swimming pool full of water a day for seven weeks, unbeknownst to me, and not have any damage.”

Halifax Water’s customer service people repeatedly told her she must have a leaky toilet.

“It’s preposterous,” Fineberg said.

Her toilet does leak, but it leaked before the water consumption spiked, and it still does. That doesn’t explain the massive increase, then decrease, in consumption.

Fineberg’s basement is carpeted, she said, meaning water there would quickly become obvious. Water damage at this scale anywhere in the home would’ve been obvious, she said.

If the water leaked just outside her house, it would still come into the basement or at least flood the lawn. And if someone stole the water from the outdoor tap on the front of the house, they would’ve had to park a truck on her small downtown Halifax street for four hours a day.

Allie Fineberg stands next to an oil truck. By her calculation, Halifax Water is charging her for the equivalent of filling this truck every two days for seven weeks in 2019. — Photo: Allie Fineberg/UARB

“They would have needed a tanker, which would have needed to be parked in front of my house, which isn’t going to happen on a the street that might only be 20 feet wide to begin with,” Fineberg said.

“That ain’t happening.”

Fineberg believes there must have been some mistake: either a decimal point got moved, or the meter really wasn’t working. The meter was tested and found to be accurate, but Fineberg notes it wasn’t tested until after it stopped registering the astronomical consumption rates.

“I don’t know anything in this life that isn’t capable of making a mistake,” Fineberg said. “For them to tell me that this machine is 100%, sorry, the only thing in life that’s 100% is death. Other than that, there’s variables. You know, and I don’t think it’s right that I’ve been railroaded.”

As McGrath wrote in the decision, it is Halifax Water’s position that the smart meters don’t make mistakes:

Halifax Water said: “Halifax Water meters are positive displacement meters – water must flow through the meter in order to register consumption….As a positive displacement mechanical device, the meter is only capable of measuring and registering the water that goes through it.” Halifax Water said that the AMI meter prevents any human error because the meter readings are automatically sent over a radio frequency network.

Fineberg is not the first Halifax Water ratepayer to suffer this same fate. In 2011, CBC reported another woman, Edie Goulet, received a bill for $2,000 and Halifax Water told her to pay up because the old meters didn’t make mistakes either:

As [Goulet] made her way up the management food chain at Halifax Water, she says she was told by a few people that the meters don’t make mistakes.

Because they only check the meters every three months, Goulet says she wonders why the commission would be able to say that with such confidence.

“I can’t afford to pay $2,000 just for no reason,” she said.

Plumbers have told her if that much water was running through her home, she’d hear it.

Fineberg said she spoke with Goulet, and they feel like other people must be in the same boat. She’s calling on them to come forward.

“There are other people, I’m sure, that have been railroaded except nobody knows about anybody else,” she said.

“Unless a whole bunch of people get together and find out about this, everybody’s going to be kept by themselves and nobody’s going to know this was going on at all.”

As for her next steps, Fineberg isn’t sure. The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal can overturn UARB decisions, but Fineberg said she’s not sure how to go about the process to hire a lawyer for something like this. But she’s not done fighting the bill.

“I’m not about to let this go … because I know that I didn’t do it,” she said.

In an email on Monday, Halifax Water spokesperson James Campbell would not say whether the utility would require Fineberg to pay the full bill, citing “private customer information.” Campbell reiterated Halifax Water’s position that the water must have flowed through the meter.

“Halifax Water does not monitor how customers use their water once it passes through the water meter,” Campbell wrote.

“As noted in the NSUARB’s decision, ‘How the water is consumed beyond the meter is not within the scope of the Board’s jurisdiction, nor is it Halifax Water’s responsibility.’ Also, our water meters are positive displacement meters, meaning water must flow through the meter in order to register consumption.”

Asked what Halifax Water would say to other customers worried they may face the same issue, Campbell suggested they sign up for the utility’s new online billing system.

“In late November 2020 Halifax Water launched Customer Connect,” he wrote. “Through Customer Connect, customers can receive alerts for continuous water flow or high usage, manage their water use and costs by monitoring daily consumption, receive bills online, request to start or cancel Halifax Water services, receive bill and payment notifications online, sign up for local service or traffic interruption notices and much more.”


The Halifax Examiner is an advertising-free, subscriber-supported news site. Your subscription makes this work possible; please subscribe.

Some people have asked that we additionally allow for one-time donations from readers, so we’ve created that opportunity, via the PayPal button below. We also accept e-transfers, cheques, and donations with your credit card; please contact iris “at” halifaxexaminer “dot” ca for details.

Thank you!




Filed Under: City Hall, Featured, News

About Zane Woodford

Zane Woodford covers municipal politics for the Halifax Examiner. Email: [email protected]; Twitter

Comments

  1. davidmorash says

    January 11, 2021 at 6:51 pm

    It’s a smart meter that sends data over a radio network,and there’s no way it can be wrong? That data presumably flows into a billing system. So that can’t be wrong either? Are there safeguards against corrupted data? Do they retain the meter reading data so they can verify the billing system is correct? So many things could be wrong, I wonder if the UARB has the technical expertise to really press Halifax Water on these issues.

    Log in to Reply
    • Daniel Gaston says

      January 12, 2021 at 8:21 am

      Came to say much the same thing. I work with computers, and write software, as part of my job. I work with a lot of “professional” software. Everything makes errors on occasion, even if it is exceedingly rare. And I can guarantee there are humans involved somewhere in that process that can make a mistake.

      Log in to Reply
  2. Colin May says

    January 11, 2021 at 11:46 pm

    They must be Trump meters

    Log in to Reply
  3. Frank Foster says

    January 12, 2021 at 7:56 am

    Well isn’t this typical? Heaven forbid that common sense should enter these procedings. One of Dr. Abraham van Helsing’s primary tools when establishing the attack of a vampire was to confirm the massive blood loss of the victim and then ask where the blood went if not drained by a vampire? The bloodsucker in this case is Halifax Water who really should have declared an obvious error and moved on. Sadly my faith in the UARB has not increased if this easy excersize in simple logic stumped them.

    Log in to Reply
  4. sigs says

    January 12, 2021 at 10:36 am

    An intensely interesting podcast called Bit Flip (a RadioLab Episode) addressed a similarly mystifying error in data, and found the error to be from…….. A COSMIC RAY!
    I’m not saying this was a cosmic ray, but I’m also not saying it wasn’t a cosmic ray.
    https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bit-flip

    Log in to Reply
  5. tempahull says

    January 12, 2021 at 11:21 am

    Here’s an article on hacked smart meters. Not sure if these are the exact kind of meters Halifax Water uses or not: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190606101822.htm?fbclid=IwAR3AARGZzGMvlR6eJI3kBu8xc6K4CvFTPgtKmF1aM-xd7fmJmTf2H0UyLDQ

    Log in to Reply
  6. tempahull says

    January 12, 2021 at 12:04 pm

    And engineer who does investigations involved with Public Utility Commission in Sacramento states that if they’re metering, they’re supposed to compare the sum of water they pumped from the treatment plant to the amount of water recorded in the collective meters. Halifax water should have a record of this for multiple years. They do it to identify leaks in the distribution system. A competent Public Utility Commission would review that data in this case, which I doubt they did.

    Log in to Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

PRICED OUT

A collage of various housing options in HRM, including co-ops, apartment buildings, shelters, and tents
PRICED OUT is the Examiner’s investigative reporting project focused on the housing crisis.

You can learn about the project, including how we’re asking readers to direct our reporting, our published articles, and what we’re working on, on the PRICED OUT homepage.

2020 mass murders

Nine images illustrating the locations, maps, and memorials of the mass shootings

All of the Halifax Examiner’s reporting on the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020, and recent articles on the Mass Casualty Commission and newly-released documents.

Updated regularly.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

A young man wearing a purple jean jacket and sporting a moustache lies on the green grass surrounded by pink plastic flamingos

Episode 80 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne, is published.

Singer-songwriter Willie Stratton has wandered a number of genre paths, starting with raw acoustic folk as a teen phenom, moving through surf rock as Beach Bait, and landing in a Roy Orbison-style classic country on his new album Drugstore Dreamin’. Ahead of his release show at the Marquee on Friday, he stops in to explain why mixing influences makes the best art, how he approaches the guitar, and what he likes about his day job as a barber.

Listen to the episode here.

Check out some of the past episodes here.

Subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your device — there’s a great instructional article here. Email Suzanne for help.

You can reach Tara here.

Sign up for email notification

Sign up to receive email notification when we publish new Morning Files and Weekend Files. Note: signing up for this email is NOT the same as subscribing to the Halifax Examiner. To subscribe, click here.

Recent posts

  • How RCMP commanders’ bumbling response to Portapique allowed the killer to continue his murder spree May 27, 2022
  • Halifax cop claims she worried the man she tased would use a pen as a weapon May 26, 2022
  • Emera has record profits, but wants more from ratepayers to move off coal May 26, 2022
  • Sowing seeds of sustainability in Nova Scotia May 26, 2022
  • Feeding the discussion on breastfeeding and infant formula May 26, 2022

Commenting policy

All comments on the Halifax Examiner are subject to our commenting policy. You can view our commenting policy here.

Copyright © 2022