30,000 Water Bill Complaints Filed

ATLANTA - About 30,000 customers have filed formal complaints with the city of Atlanta about their high water bills. For the first time, an audit obtained by FOX 5 explains what caused the bills to skyrocket.

Over the past two years, over 30,000 Atlanta water customers have gone down to City Hall to fill out paperwork to formally dispute their water bill charges.

No issue has generated more complaints about Atlanta city govement than high water bills.

"$2,500?  The water would have to be running all day long in a vacant building to come up with that kind of bill, its just senseless to me," said building owner Carl Williams.

Williams is disputing charges on a commercial property he owns downtown.

An inteal audit set to be released Wednesday reveals how many water customers have filed formal complaints against the water department for high water bills.

For the year 2009, 16,693 water accounts were disputed and in 2010 there were 14,293 bills disputed for a total of 30,986 complaints.

City Hall has been slapped with a class action lawsuit because of the number of complaints.

Mayor Kasim Reed has promised aggressive action with repairs in the street as well as a thorough investigation into what may be behind the wildly fluctuating bills since Atlanta switched to an electronic meter system.

About 9,193 of the city's water meters have been checked according to the water audit, which is about 7 percent of the entire Atlanta water system.

The audit stated, "When correctly maintained, all components of the meter work properly and can accurately record water usage."

Many things can lead to incorrect data such as cut wires discovered in the meter box, components that don't fit correctly that are mismatched, cracked glass covers, water flooding the meter, missing or improperly placed antennas.

Only about three out of four of the meters were properly installed and the automatic meter system fails, the tech will estimate the monthly bill.

The audit says, "Estimating water usage is a contributing factor to increased billing and complaints and disputes. Estimating readings can lead to inaccurate billings."

"We moved out from Florida and I mean we had the same amount of people in the house and we averaged maybe $10 to $15 a month for water," said water customer Hollis Stephens.