Can I have a separate meter for my outdoor water use?
The City of Novi does not issue separate meters for lawn sprinklers.
Residents occasionally ask about having a dual meter system so that they are not billed for water that does not get collected and treated as sanitary sewage, such as water used in an underground irrigation system or a swimming pool. One meter would measure interior water consumption that eventually flows to the sewer; the other meter would record exterior water use that potentially does not enter the City’s sanitary sewage system.
Under the City’s current single meter program, the water meter at a customer’s home or business is used to determine charges for sanitary sewer use with the assumption that the vast majority of the water used eventually flows into the sanitary sewer (i.e., water for clothes/dish washing, showers, toilets, etc.). Therefore, both water and sewer charges are based on the volume of water that flows through a single water meter.
As a customer community for the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department, the City of Novi is billed for both drinking water use and sanitary sewage collection based on water consumption only. The City in turn uses the same billing concept for its water and sewer customers. This is because total costs need to be covered, and if separate meters were allowed the cost per unit of sewer would have to be increased to cover the overall sanitary system's costs. Communities that allow separate metering are spreading costs over a smaller customer base and therefore have sewer rates that are higher than communities that do not allow dual meters.