For Caleb Johnston, a recent 21-day water outage at his Southwest Baltimore home left him not only tired of lugging jugs of water through the snowy streets, but deeply cynical about city government.

One aspect of his ordeal that had him shaking his head was the “smart” water meter with its seemingly flimsy plastic parts.

“That cap [technically the plastic bottom base] was split right down the middle,” said Johnston, of the 2000 block of Frederick Avenue.

The Department of Public Works employees who responded to his no-water call quickly replaced the meter – and explained to him that the new models were breaking all over town.

“They were complaining about the new meters, and they said they had to put a lot of them in because they break,” Johnston said.

“They told me private contractors put them in, and the old ones [made] of metal didn’t break,” Johnston recalled.

Radio Silence

Replacing a newly-installed water meter that broke with another identical one was just part of what Johnston found vexing as he and his roommate Max Eilbacher dealt with the city over the three weeks.

Their water service, which went out on February 16, was restored on March 9, Monday morning. No crews were around at the time. Their lengthy H2O-less period was not unusual across Baltimore this winter.

During the past few cold and snowy weeks, DPW dealt with some 6,000-water-related calls. Yesterday a spokesman said the city has resolved most of the reported frozen and broken water pipes that have flooded citizens’ basements or left them without water.

“As of this morning we had about 50 customers left without water as a result of the extended hard freeze,” said DPW communications chief Jeffrey Raymond.

For Johnston and Eilbacher, though, they’re pretty sure time and warming temperatures had more to do with the return of water service than anything the city did.

For 17 days, there was no city response to their calls for help. Others on their block with similar outage problems also were getting little help from the city.

Then, Johnston said, crews came out, one after another, and tried the same ineffectual approach, which gets to the next part of what he found disturbing about the city’s response.

Not Talking to Each Other

“The big problem I see is the lack of coordination between 311, the citizens and the workers,” Johnston said. “We’ve had seven different crews, and they all came out and tried the same thing,”

The crews, some of them private contractors and some from DPW, all attempted to heat the surface area around the meter, Johnston said.

Each time the procedure didn’t work and they would leave, vowing to come back and instead dig below ground to find and fix the source of the problem. Then when a new crew arrived, they tried once again to heat the surface.

“At one point, one crew showed up half an hour after the other one,” Johnston said, questioning why one team didn’t pass along the information to the other. Each time he talked to the crews or to 311, he said he carefully explained the situation.

“It seemed like a waste. They could have been working at somebody else’s house, doing something that was actually effective.”

Better a Meter Break than a Pipe

DPW spokesman Raymond told us earlier today that DPW was investigating the Frederick Avenue situation, but was “confident” that the new meters were not the cause of the problem.

But he did acknowledge that the meters do break and discussed exactly how.

“We’ve said many times over the past several weeks that the meters are made of metal, are built to industry standards, and will break if water inside them freezes solid,” he said.

“It is preferable that meters break instead of pipes because they can be easily accessed and removed,” he added. “Pipes must be dug up, which is more invasive, costly and takes longer to complete.”

He explained that the plastic on the meters “is a cap that houses the readout. This part does not come into contact with water.”

Multiple Attempts

As for the overall problems experienced by Johnston and his neighbors, Raymond had this to say after getting additional information: “We had three different customers call in service requests at different times on that block.”

Two customers had significant freezes. “We made multiple attempts to thaw those lines,” Raymond said. “When we did restore water service, one customer’s line froze again (it was subsequently re-thawed) and another had a problem on their side of the line.”

“Another customer did have a problem with a meter. Our records show a call came in March 5 and service was restored March 6,” Raymond said.

“We also found late last week a valve that had been closed. We have not determined what repair work was being done that required closing the valve. It was re-opened as soon as that problem was discovered.”

Little Confidence

Johnston said he’s glad his nearly month-long stint of waterlessness is over. He had to wash and get water from his brother’s house two blocks away.

He works at home on the computer but felt somewhat trapped, waiting for each new crew of workers to come.

Having owned his home for 10 years and having seen the water go out for a week once before, Johnston said he’s just worried about what’s going to happen next winter.

He’s not sure if the “smart” meter was the cause of his problem, but knowing he has the same kind of meter on his water line doesn’t make him feel confident. Neither does the long radio silence from the city, followed by multiple crews who seemingly start from square one.

“In nine months,” he noted, “it’s going to start to get cold again.”