Wednesday, March 4, 2026
The City of Toronto is starting a three-year program to replace all 470,000 water meter transmission units in use by customers due to early failures of MTUs across the ciry.
70 per cent of the units have already failed with 100 per cent forecasted to fail by Sept. 2026, a City of Toronto release said.
Automated meter reading was rolled out between 2009 and 2015 as part of a city-wide upgrade to the Water Meter Program and “at the time, the MTUs were expected to last 20 years. With the early failures, the City has been forced to accelerate replacement plans years ahead of schedule,” the release said.
The City of Toronto adopted a city-wide replacement of all MTUs in May 2025 with the rollout set to begin April 2026, moving through the city by geographical zones prioritized by failure rate, amount of time on estimated billing and volume of accounts.
The city estimates up to 20,000 installations per month with the timeline ending by Dec. 2028.
Program costs are estimated at approximately $103-million funded through the City of Toronto’s budget.
the automated metering technology has already saved an estimated $350 million in operational costs since it was introduced in 2009. These savings come from a more automated process that reduces manual work and improves overall efficiency, the release said.
Customers can check what zone they are in and when they are slated for replacement on the Water Meter Transmission Unit (MTU) Replacement Program webpage.
