Whoa. Atlanta water bills: Some residents paying $1,000 a month

[cali]

Skyrocketing water bills mystify, anger residents

CNN Newsroom
By Scott Zamost and Kyra Phillips, CNN Special Investigations Unit
March 1, 2011 12:26 p.m. EST


Atlanta (CNN) -- Imagine paying as much for water as you do for your mortgage.

Residents throughout Atlanta are outraged by hundreds, even thousands of dollars in monthly spikes in their water bills, and have questioned the legitimacy of the charges for years. Now, they're demanding answers.

"I thought we were sinking in a hole of water," said Debbi Scarborough. "It scared me to death. I thought we had a major leak when I got the bill."

Over two months last summer, her family's monthly water bill, shot up to $1,805 In July and then $1,084 in August, leaving a balance due of more than $3,000. She said in the past her bill has averaged $200
to $250.


<snip>

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/01/water.bills.war/

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. Wonder if privatization is involved somehow?

:shrug:

[WinkyDink]

8. Oh, gee, no, it couldn't be, could it? The Marketplace perfects all it encounters.

[notadmblnd]

2. my electric bill shot up recently

I expected it to be around 200.00 through the winter since I had 2 1/2 ft of insulation blown into my attic last January and that's what it was last year this time. They changed my meter in Dec and my bills shot up close to 400.00. What is really weird is that my gas bill is lower than it's ever been 107.00 for Jan. so it's not up because it's colder. But DTE tells me "too bad, so sad." They swear nothing is out of order, in fact "the new meters are more accurate than the old ones" (they say) so how do you argue with them?

[WinkyDink]

9. Hey---so did mine! $400! Are you PPL, by any chance?

[TorchTheWitch]

11. It's because you live in PA

There had been a law in PA for over ten years that put a cap on how much electric companies could charge for electricity that was allowed to expire at the end of the year, so now electric companies are again charging full rates they hadn't been allowed to for a little over a decade. That's the cause of the giant spike in your electric bill. My bill jumped about 40% and I'm livid. Of course, the media was never on this and it was allowed to expire very quietly, so now we're all stuck.

[WinkyDink]

14. Tom Ridge has my undying loathing.

[notadmblnd]

17. I'm in Mich, but it could have happened here too?

[notadmblnd]

16. what is PPL?

[demosincebirth]

12. I got a new electric and gas meter and my bill went down from $150 a month to $106

[emilyg]

13. So did mine - since we had

the Smart Meters installed.

[taught_me_patience]

3. Sounds like an underground leak n/t

[hfojvt]

6. probably not

it would have to be a leak between the meter and the house. Often there is less than ten feet of pipe between the meter and the house. The plumber should have checked that pipe too since it is the homeowner's responsibility. Also, typically water costs less than $3 for 1,000 gallons. So to add $800 to a water bill would require an additional 250,000 gallons of water. I don't think you can put 250,000 gallons of water into a front yard without noticing it. Plus that is a leak of over 5 gallons a minute. My faucet does not produce 5 gallons a minute running full blast.

[CurtEastPoint]

4. ATL did privatize a number of years ago but quickly dumped them.

The problem is that the aging water/sewer infrastructure was mandated to be fixed. Literally billions.

Plus all the other problems re: meters, software, incompetence (my note) add up to a perfect storm.

I'm in a close suburb w/our own water system...thank goodness.

[hfojvt]

5. that's kinda funny

just last night I was the lone negative vote for our water department to purchase another 1200 of those automatic water meters.

I am working on a proposal for the next meeting to explain why they are a bad deal. First, they cost 3 times as much or more than a manual meter. Supposedly they are saving labor costs, but since the extra cost of the meters is about $75,000 a year I say that we can easily hire a meter reader for less than $50,000 a year. The water customers would save money AND it would create, or save, a good paying job in the city.

Instead water departments are so enamored of new technology that they spend a whole bunch of money just so they can cut jobs. First they have the extra cost of the meters and then they use labor to take out a perfectly good manual meter and replace it with a radio read.

At least up north we have the excuse that the manual meters cannot be read in the winter because they get buried by snow and ice. There is no excuse for Atlanta.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. It's probably illegal for them to collect rainwater too I'd imagine, bout right. n/t

[Shagbark Hickory]

10. This has been going on for years.

Idiots, computer problems, incompetent politicians, the lot.

Funny this made headlines on CNN.com What a joke. It's a local story and an old one at that.
Anything but wisconsin, eh cnn?

[ReggieVeggie]

15. I pay about $30/month and I think it's too much

those bills sound like something you'd pay in the middle of the desert

[flvegan]

18. Happened recently here in Tampa. Select pockets of folks

and the water meters are being blamed. Naturally, the city states that this is impossible no matter what the master plumber the homeowner called says.

[Exultant Democracy]

19. There has been a rash of urban water war on the poor for a while. Foreclosures over water bills

have hit people in urban areas all over the country.

[customerserviceguy]

20. I've been doing some reading on this

Sometimes, they mate a register for a smaller meter on to a body for a larger one, or vice versa, and the meter over-registers.

But when you replace faulty meters with ones that work perfectly, leaks become evident. Here's something that everybody should do: Take the top off of your toilet tank, all of the ones in the house. Pour in something that will make the water in the tank dark, Coca-Cola or grape soda will work, anything that colors the water dark. Don't flush.

Check the bowl water every fifteen minutes for an hour. If it stays clear, the toilet is fine. If some of the colored water 'bleeds' from the tank to the bowl, you have a leak.

A toilet is always hooked up to a source of water, and a way to get rid of that water without making a puddle or a mess, that's why we like toilets. But if the flapper valve in the bottom of the tank is leaking, it can rob you blind.