Halifax Water: Who Handles Water, Sewer and Stormwater

A utility, not a department

Halifax Water describes itself as the municipal water, wastewater and stormwater utility serving the residents of the Halifax region. It is municipally owned and operates on a cost-of-service basis, which means there is no profit built into its rates: the money collected is what the utility needs for operations, capital investment and debt financing.

It is regulated by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board, which approves the Halifax Water Regulations governing both the public’s use of the systems and Halifax Water’s own operation and maintenance of them. Its Board of Commissioners includes four members of Halifax Regional Council appointed by Council, three residents of the municipality appointed by Council, and the Chief Administrative Officer or a municipal employee appointed by the CAO. The Board meets quarterly.

The municipality runs everything else a municipality normally owns — roads and winter operations, waste collection, bylaws and enforcement, parks, and transit — and those requests go through 311.

• Report a pothole, a damaged sign, a streetlight out, or a plowing concern to the municipality through 311.
• Report a water main break, a sewer backup, discoloured water or a stormwater problem to Halifax Water.

Where the boundary sits on your property

This is the single most useful thing to understand, because it decides who pays when something fails. Halifax Water is responsible for the public systems — the underground piped systems in the street, plus ditches and culverts, within the public right-of-way — and maintains and upgrades them continuously.

The property owner is responsible for the laterals: the underground pipes running from the building to the Halifax Water system in the street. There may be more than one.

• The water lateral delivers water from the main in the street into the house. A water meter measures how much is delivered, and that is how you are billed.
• The wastewater lateral carries flows from toilets, sinks, bathtubs, showers, dishwashers and washing machines.
• The stormwater lateral carries rain, groundwater and snow melt, including stormwater from sump pumps and yard drains.

How billing works

A Halifax Water account is tied to the water meter installed at the property. That matters when you move: the account does not travel with you, so you create a new account at the new address and cancel the old one. The utility asks to be told at least five business days in advance of needing an account, and charges an account creation fee on your first invoice.

Deposits for water, wastewater or stormwater must be paid within ten days of account activation, but no deposit is required if you meet at least one of the utility’s exemption criteria.

Because the meter measures the water delivered, the consumption charge is the largest part of the bill. Water that passes through the meter is billable even when it is going through a leak, which is why finding leaks matters as much as watching the meter reading.

• You have a Halifax Water account that is not delinquent, with timely payments for 12 consecutive months.
• You have a reference letter from another utility confirming a non-delinquent account with 12 consecutive months of timely payments.
• You own the property to be serviced.

Water quality and treatment

Halifax Water operates three large water supply plants and six smaller community supply plants, supplying 360,000 customers across the municipality. It follows a multiple barrier approach to water quality: protecting water at the source by design, carefully managing treatment and distribution, and closely monitoring quality.

Treatment varies by plant according to the quality of the source water. The processes in use include direct dual-media filtration, sedimentation with multi-media filtration, direct filtration, disinfection with ultraviolet light and sodium hypochlorite, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and iron and manganese removal by green sand filtration.

Compliance sampling is weekly across the drinking water systems and from the sewage treatment plants Halifax Water operates. Samples are analysed by certified laboratories external to the utility, compared against provincial operating approvals issued by Nova Scotia Environment, and reported to the province. Wastewater results are also reported federally under the Wastewater System Effluent Regulations.

Reporting a problem

Halifax Water runs a 24-hour emergency service for water, sewer and flooding emergencies, and a customer care centre for accounts and billing enquiries during business hours.

• A water main break, a sewer backup, flooding, or any water or sewer emergency — Halifax Water’s 24-hour emergency line.
• Discoloured water, taste or odour, or a suspected leak — the utility’s water concerns pages, or the customer care centre.
• Billing, metering and meter reading, the application of standard charges, misuse of water, sanitary or stormwater systems, or the conduct of Halifax Water staff — the utility’s complaints process.
• A pothole, a bylaw matter, waste collection or transit — Halifax Regional Municipality through 311.

Conservation and reducing your use

Halifax Water frames conservation around consumption, because the consumption charge is the largest part of the bill and lower usage means a lower bill. It notes that almost two-thirds of the water used daily in a home is used in the bathroom, and that in most of those cases the water is also collected as wastewater.

• Indoors: install low-flow fixtures and appliances, check for and repair leaks, run only full loads of laundry and dishes, and turn the tap off while brushing teeth or shaving.
• Outdoors: catch rainwater in barrels, water plants early in the morning, use mulch, sweep driveways rather than hosing them, and let a lawn go dormant in dry periods.
• The Halifax Water Regulations, approved by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board, cover misuse of water resources as well as the utility’s own operations.