Does a municipal water meter measure how much water a facility consumes?
No. A municipal meter measures withdrawal, which is what the utility bills for. Consumption is withdrawal minus what is returned, and the return side is usually not metered at all: sewer charges are commonly estimated as a fixed percentage of the water meter reading. The consumption figure is therefore an assumption resting on an assumption.
A meter also cannot see reuse as a mechanism. If a facility recovers cooling tower blowdown back into make-up, the meter simply reads lower, and it cannot distinguish a thousand cubic metres of recovered water from a thousand cubic metres of reduced load. Any efficiency or replenishment claim needs the mechanism, not just a smaller bill.
A meter cannot see water that never passes through a municipal pipe. Where a facility draws under a licence, a transfer, groundwater or trucked supply, which is common in basins closed to new allocation, the utility has no instrument on that flow at all.
Finally, a meter reading carries no record of its own condition. There is no calibration state, no drift detection and no indication that anything was wrong. It cannot fail visibly; it simply returns a number.
Sources
Alberta's southern basins are closed to new allocation, so new supply moves by transfer rather than new licence
Government of Alberta