North Perth has reached an agreement with EFS Plastics regarding a water billing issue.
Mark Hackett, the North Perth Manager of Environmental Services, said an issue arose at EFS Plastics causing the metre to be read incorrectly.
"We had a calculation error based on how the metres are read, basically because a valve was open that shouldn't have been opened. Moving forward, that valve has been sealed," he said.
The municipality sent numerous warnings to EFS staff, and when the issue was finally resolved, the overage charges on their water bill amounted to $28,000.
EFS Plastics owner Martin Vogt told the municipality he doesn't want the money paid back, but asked that North Perth support a carbon footprint project and plant trees at the site.
"Martin felt that if they didn't want to return any of the funds to EFS Plastics that they would make a donation towards a carbon footprint initiative, so we do have an environmental fund where we do tree plantings and things like that," said Vogt.
North Perth will be donating roughly $19,000 to plant a large number of trees at the EFS Plastics site.
