THE VILLAGES, Fla. – Maxine Miller says she is on a fixed income without a fix after her water bill more than tripled from around $30 to more than $100.
The 89-year-old showed News 6 her water bills. We noticed Miller typically used around 12,000-14,000 gallons of water a month, but one bill spiked to more than 35,000 gallons.
“If I had that much water I’d be walking in mud,” said Miller.
Miller told News 6 that the water company, The Villages Community Development Districts, first notified her and said there could be a leak. Miller said she called an irrigation specialist to check it out.
“He turned on the sprinklers. He went around and he checked them all and he said I didn’t have a leak,” said Miller.
Miller told us she was not the only person who got hit with excessive water usage, “Fran next door got the same problem, an excessive use of water, then my neighbor at the end of the cul-de-sac got an excessive use of water.”
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A News 6 investigation uncovered others in The Villages have reported the same problem to their utility district board, including one man who was hit with a $1,200 water bill for using more than 200,000 gallons of water.
“They had a spike of 201,000 gallons of irrigation in one month. Just to help you understand, to put it into perspective, a lot of the water towers that you all see we have in our system are in that 150,000-200,000 gallon range. So when you’re looking at a water tower, that’s about 200,000 gallons,” said Dan Warren, a board member of the North Sumter County Utility Dependent District during a board meeting in August.
With all of these people having unreasonably high water bills, without a leak, News 6 wanted to find out what could be the problem, so we started with the water meters. Miller’s meter seemed to be working, but her next-door neighbor’s didn’t have a reading, while the meter across the street was underwater.
News 6 called and emailed members of Miller’s utility board, The Village Center Community Development District, but we have not heard back so we spoke with Rick Rademacher, the Vice Chair of the North Sumter County Utility Dependent District.
Rademacher said he has recently heard his fair share of complaints about high water bills. Recently his board worked to get results on unexplained high water usage. They changed their policy, creating a tiered system for credits.
“We’ve satisfied most of our complaints, for some reason the other water boards here in The Villages have not,” according to Rademacher.
He told News 6 that if a water meter is not working, call your water utility. In The Villages, they will send someone to take a look.
“We find that in most cases it’s some system in the house that we have no control of. A toilet that is running you know, water leaking someplace,” said Rademacher.
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