A new online portal and water monitoring technology could help residents track water use ahead of potential restrictions in September.
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The City of Corpus Christi projects it could reach a Level One water emergency status by September, raising concerns among ratepayers about how to monitor and reduce their water use ahead of potential restrictions.
The concerns come as city leaders discuss possible water curtailment measures and allocations that could take effect this fall. Under those projections, ratepayers would be limited in how much water they could use, with surcharges applied to those who exceed the set amount.
With those possibilities on the horizon, many residents are asking how they can track and reduce their water usage before receiving their monthly bill.
“So I don’t see in this presentation where we have a mechanism for our residents to be informed, or to communicate or to know, where am I in my allocation?,” Mayor Paulette Guajardo said.
Guajardo emphasized that many community members want clearer ways to monitor their usage.
City Manager Peter Zanoni said staff is working to improve that access, including redesigning the city’s water bill and creating a new online portal.
“We’re in the process right now working with our IT Director Peter Collins, and his team, to develop a simple portal where a customer will set up an account using their water account and they can go online on their phone or on a computer,” Zanoni said.
Zanoni said the current billing format has been in place for years and is not user-friendly. The new system aims to give customers clearer, more timely and accessible information.
He said the portal will list some key items.
“How much water have I used since the beginning of the billing cycle? How much water based on a formula am I projected to use in the remainder of the billing cycle?,” Zanoni said.
City leaders are also exploring additional tools to help residents monitor usage more closely. One option under consideration is Flume Water, a smart monitoring system that tracks water use in real time and can detect leaks.
“It’s a little sensor that goes directly on your water meter. So it ships to your home, you open it up like you would any other smart home product, you self-install it on your water meter,” said Eric Adler, CEO and Co-founder of Flume Water. “It only takes about five, ten minutes to get up and running, connect a little bridge to your WiFi. And then once that system’s installed, it monitors all your water usage in real time and tells you how much water is being used for irrigation systems, for toilets, for dishwashers, for showers, you know, all the data is there.”
Councilman Mark Scott said the city is looking at different ways such technology could be made available to residents.
“We could provide it at a discount and you could just be a pay as you go kind of thing. We could buy a bunch of them and level it out through the water system such that we all pay a little bit, and it also could be like our rain barrels that we’ve purchased,” Scott said. “The question is, will it benefit ratepayers into using less water? Which if you use less water you actually pay less and so maybe that’s an idea that could save money in the in the long run.”
While conversations with Flume and other companies are ongoing, Zanoni said the city’s new online water bill portal will be available soon and offered at no cost to residents.