CUC Assistant Executive Director Utu Abe Malae said there is an ongoing settlement of the water bills disputed by PSS.
The Board of Education has said that CUC was billing PSS based on non-existing water meters, particularly at Hopwood Junior High School.
Malae said CUC has six water accounts: four metered and one un-metered or flat rate at Hopwood.
Three meters are not registering any flow and are not being used for billing the school, he added.
But two meters registered an average of 236,000 gallons per month in 2010, he said.
The sixth account, which is un-metered, is being billed for a flat charge for 200,000 gallons/month since 1991, he added.
Malae said when the meters were installed in March 2006, the flat rate should have been eliminated.
“When some of the meters failed or became unreadable in 2007-2009, matters became more complicated.
Example: when a meter fails, an estimate is made. Subsequently when the meter is repaired or replaced, another adjustment has to be made,” he said in an e-mail interview.
He admitted that the coordination among CUC’s customer service, meter reading, billings and water operations was “notoriously poor.”
“Every single process at CUC was designed (not evolved, but designed) to frustrate and discourage cooperation and it is our job as managers to fix these systemic problems of the organization,” he said.
CUC, he added, continues the replacement of defective meters.
Malae said they have already replaced about 8,000 of these meters and 2,000 new ones are being shipped by the manufacturer this year.
