Why Houston Water Bills Went Wrong: 340,000 Meters Over 20 Years Old, Failed Readers and 600 Homes Fitted With the Wrong Equipment

The $5.5 million meter vote before Houston City Council this week, which this station covered in its council file, is the latest payment on a much older problem. A city presentation to a council committee in May traced Houston's water-billing complaints to aging meter equipment, failed remote reading devices, limited capacity to read meters by hand, and estimated bills that were later corrected with large catch-up charges, the Texas Gazette reported, citing KPRC 2's reporting on the contract.

The scale is in the city's own numbers from that presentation. More than 340,000 of Houston's 514,000 meters were more than 20 years old, and more than 240,000 still lacked updated remote reading devices. Since April 2024 the city has installed more than 120,000 remote reading devices and replaced more than 110,000 meter registers - which is another way of saying the fix, two and a half years in, is not yet halfway through the meter fleet.

One part of the fix created its own victims. In May, KPRC reported that Public Works installed the wrong meter equipment at more than 600 homes during the 2024 replacement push, leaving many of those customers with inaccurate bills for years; city emails obtained by the station showed the error was found in January 2026, and crews replaced the meters that March. This fall, Mayor John Whitmire's administration resumed collections, starting with about 15,000 customers who together owe about $30 million - limited, Public Works told FOX 26, to customers with a Sensus remote reading device, because the department has confidence in the accuracy of those bills. 'This was another significant issue I inherited, and we have spent the past two years fixing it,' Whitmire said in August. 'We have replaced faulty meters, corrected billing problems, and worked to restore confidence that customers are being billed accurately.'

The contract underneath it all is the Sensus USA deal for the city's Advanced Metering Infrastructure system, awarded November 24, 2020 at a $38 million maximum over 10 years; the city has spent $34,322,180.55 so far, KPRC reported, and the $5.5 million now before council would lift the total to $43.5 million - past the original cap - with Public Works saying the money covers higher material and operating costs and keeps AMI operations running through the end of 2027. Under council rules any member can delay the item a week, so the billing saga's next chapter may slip to next week's meeting.