Every new apartment in Melbourne and Brisbane comes with its own water meter, but in Sydney the only ones that do are all in one block in Hornsby.
Nearly everyone else has one meter for every block, with the owners’ corporation usually splitting the costs among each unit, an arrangement that provides no incentive to cut water use.
This practice has never been challenged, but Sydney Water applied to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal in August to increase the real cost of water 15 per cent, so there is growing momentum for Sydney to follow the lead of other capitals.
The chief executive of Strata Community Australia, Mark Lever, said Sydney Water has asked the tribunal for permission to impose the same service charges on apartments as on houses, but without giving them a meter.
”I’m struggling with the logic. I would have thought a meter was a pretty fundamental part of a service charge.”
He wants meters installed in new and old apartments, not just to reward those who use water sparingly, but protect them from abuses like one he heard about in a block in Ashfield a few years ago.
A disgruntled resident turned on the taps and left them running for almost a year. From May 2004 to March 2005 the water flowed, with Sydney Water telling the owners it could do nothing as the water was being used on private land.
It was only when the owners’ corporation put a meter on the man’s pipes that he turned them off. By then the owners’ corporation had chalked up a $15,000 bill, enough to require a levy of almost $1000 per apartment.
Laws making meters compulsory were passed in Victoria more than a decade ago but NSW has not followed suit.
In 2006 Sydney Water installed 250 meters in a block in Hornsby in a pilot study to assess costs and benefits. The study found meters could be installed in new developments for $100-$150 per dwelling and twice that to buy the meter. Because of difficulty of access to apartments in large blocks, Sydney Water installed meters it can read remotely with details of consumption sent down a phone line.
A Sydney Water spokeswoman, Emma Whale, said it was planning to talk to developers about installing meters but denied the issue had been forgotten.
Even if developers did install meters, she said the Hornsby trial suggested it may have little impact on water usage.
Christine Byrne disagrees. The founder of the non-profit group Green Strata is chairwoman of the owners’ corporation of an block of 120 apartments where residents have cut water bills by 20 per cent, saving $11,500 a year by making changes to increase efficiency.
”People who want to be water efficient are subsidising those who don’t,” she said.
