![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-286941-100x100.png\")
Granny is selling water on the black market, check craigs list.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-53958-100x100.png\")
@Megladon: Nope. She's started one of those illegal Fish go-ops you read about in the newspapers.
I bet if you watch her place long enough, you'll see some jittery people knocking on her door, trying to score some herring or a bit of cod.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-98962-100x100.png\")
@Julius Seizure. (Lackey Position Avail.): Can I get 32 6oz mahi portions. Can I get it on credit? You know I'm good for it man.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/css/images/default.gif\")
It would be nice if we had more details... for instance, if there is a break in the main between the meter and the house, you are responsible for the water used during the break.
Or, if the meter had been estimated for years, this is the catch-up bill. Most utilities work out payment arrangements in such circumstances.
Lastly, it could be a simple error by a meter reader, data clerk, or computer.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-901728-100x100.png\")
@sirwired: Last year a guy from the natural gas utility stopped in... I think there was a gas leak or something in the neighborhood. I know our bill was 4x the regular price that month. $5 was our regular cost so not enough money for us to spend 3 hours on the phone recovering. Regardless, it was obnoxious.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-116400-100x100.png\")
@statgrad:
$5 was our regular cost so not enough money for us to spend 3 hours on the phone recovering. Regardless, it was obnoxious.
Good job, now the gas company thinks it's perfectly OK to overbill you because you'll shut up and pay the bill!
@howie_in_az:
\"now the gas company thinks it's perfectly OK to overbill you because you'll shut up and pay the bill!\"
Ohh... do you think they wouldn't do it again to someone else if they had to cough up $15 for my apartment? And they haven't done it again to me... I would have mentioned that, obviously.
@sirwired: The article said that she had plumber check it out, twice. I have to assume they checked the meter.
@Coles_Law: if that was the case her meter wouldnt be recording how much water was leaking out before it got to her house. Plus she wouldnt have normal water pressure, if any.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-307161-100x100.png\")
@Aladdyn: My water meter is by the curb at the easement, so it's possible. I'll grant you the water pressure, though. The damage would have to be very specific to allow any water at all into the house. I just threw out a possibility.
Is there a chance of a line break or other underground leak? That usage works out to a continuous 3.25 gallons per minute-certainly possible if there's a decent break somewhere. More likely than not a meter was just misread, but the line break possibility should be investigated. if it is the case and goes unchecked, the house's foundation could shift and cause serious damage to the building.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-762676-100x100.png\")
...if you were leaking 3.25 gallons per minute, in a couple hours your house would either drop into a sinkhole or lift and float away.
There is not the slightest chance that there's a leak of such magnitude anywhere near or in her house - the results would have been catastrophic.
@YouDidWhatNow?: It's not that much, actually-your bathtub can easily output that much. The damage would take months, but it would be catastrophic.
...if you have a bathtub that can put out 3.25 gallons per minute perpetually, that would be one big bathtub.
And if it was a main, it wouldn't be on her bill...the meter is at the house, which has a feeder pipe from the main...
Anyway, I reckon it could depend on various circumstances, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe that 130,000 gallons of water leaking someplace over the course of a month wouldn't do something magnificently catastrophic to her house...
@YouDidWhatNow?:
They could be charging her if it was a on a water main before her meter. Nowadays every utility puts in master meters for subdivisions to make it impossible to steal by messing with your meter, if the 10-100 meters downstream don't add up to the master meter, you only have 10-100 customers to search for theft. Some also call it a \"smart grid\".
The rep might have read the number wrong, or had her address on his PDA when he read the meter at some business. The reading on \"her\" meter might have more digits than her actual meter.
Some water companies, especially older or backwards ones, have unlimited billing schemes. You pay per number of bedrooms or sq ft of your house. Commercial customers get the meter. That unlimited scheme might get upgraded to a master meter, then split that bill by bedrooms, so if there was a massive leak underground, or at one person's house, everyone else would pay for it.
My house used to have unlimited water until the early 1990s, when the private water company was taken over and hooked up to the municipal groundwater water system after there was too much protesting over the private water company's \"well house next to football field of abandoned 55 gallon drums of dry cleaning perc\". When the municipal water company took over, everyone in my subdivision got meters, either in their basement, or in the sidewalk for an additional fee.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-16075-100x100.png\")
CATASTROPHIC
@YouDidWhatNow?:
i've seen a 1.5\" water line lose over a million gallons of water with no sinkhole or noticeable damage. it can happen and 3.25gpm is easily possible from a water main.
Someting is clearly and obviously amiss. Assuming a 30 day month, Mrs. Cohen would have to use 3.2379 gallons per minute, every minute of every hour for 30 consecutive days. (60 minutes x 24 hours per day x 30 days).
Either the meter reader can't read, the meter is broken, DC-WASU's records are wrong, or there is a leak.
What is the flow-rate into the house? Is a flow-rate of 3.2379 gal/min (194.2722 gal/hr) even possible?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-76455-100x100.png\")
Wait, you guys don't use 3+ gallons of water every minute of every day?
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-44827-100x100.png\")
THAT LADY IS THIRSTY
In all seriousness, how does someone at the Water authority review that statement and stand behind that?
Is she running an underground waterpark?
Maybe a blackmarket aquarium? Hoarding for the coming apocolypse?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-887707-100x100.png\")
@Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz: This is about as much water as would be used via a small branch pipe, like those going to a spigot, being left wide open continuously for the whole month. That sometimes happens to people. Pipes do break. This is how the water company makes a profit. This is especially so with those hidden underground pipes that break during seismic shifts. No one has any way to know the pipe is broken and the water company likes it that way. If pipes didn't break, they wouldn't have enough revenue to survive.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-907419-100x100.png\")
@Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz: Well, sir or madam, these people are working for the government for a reason
Nice to know that the DC DMV isn't the only corrupt department in Washington.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-851357-100x100.png\")
@darkrose: @Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz: I think incompetence is more likely the cause rather than corruption.
I would be shocked, SHOCKED I say, if there were any corruption in D.C.
@Megladon: @Do not taunt Happy Fun King Psyz: Actually, a friend of mine got a ticket in DC when she parked in a no parking before whatever zone. She had only parked there because the no parking sign was covered by tree branches. She wrote to Mayor Fenty's office and the not only was the ticket canceled, but also by the time she went their again, they had cut away the offending tree limbs.
One thing that companies/governments need is software that notices things that people would notice. Such as when a customer's bill comes to >10x the normal variation in usage, it can be flagged for someone to look at, just out of curiosity or to check that nothing's wrong.
@kepler11: @kepler11: just like, for example, how Los Angeles county/city government recently discovered it had been paying for unused/defunct phone landlines for years before someone noticed. If you create a simple program to act like a human and notice odd things, you can save yourself from these absurd things that happen because of non-intelligent computerized billing/accounting.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-18555-100x100.png\")
@kepler11:
Banks have lots of systems that do exactly this. Detect anomalous spending patterns and alert the proper department to investigate, that's why we all get the occasional call from our ccard companies asking what our last charge was.
Phone and power companies do this too. They know exactly where on their grid there's a problem.
Plumbing could be a bit more difficult to locate a leak, but I'm sure there's a meter somewhere along the lines to audit for unauthorized usage, why can't that same application watching for extra use alert when something like this happens?
@enthreeoh: well, something like this could also tell if you're suddenly losing money from someplace unexpected. It's just in their best interest to have mechanisms to detect things that are unusual, that humans would see, but are lost when you simply transfer the billing/auditing functions in an unsophisticated way to computer.
@enthreeoh: I figure if I ran a company I would want to know about this sort of thing, whether I cared or not. It would be nice to prepare for the legal backlash or the media investigations, whatever comes first.
Man, everything really is more expensive in DC
It might just be because I live in California, but 140,000 gallons of potable water for $1200 just doesn't seem bad. That's a little over 8 cents for 10 gallons.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-472462-100x100.png\")
Hydroponics. \"It helps my glaucoma!\"
People! People! She JUST had to take her pills!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-716547-100x100.png\")
Given the incompetence of the DC government, this is really not a shock.
@I Love New Jersey: You try running a state with a poverty rate of 19%. Then try doing it when a legislature in which you have no votes (Congress) decides what laws you can and cannot make. Wikipedia says \"Congress retains the right to review and overturn laws created by the city council and intervene in local affairs.\" Ok, go do an effective job.
Some people not from DC and maybe the west coast would probably believe it (that it's GOP).
I don't think bad water bills necessarily correlate with politics. But, DC for being our nation's capital, is one of the worst places to live and send your kids to public school. Just look at the voting patterns of the citizens.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-159178-100x100.png\")
It is enough water to fill two and a half 30'x50' swimming pools 5 feet deep. I think her neighbors might notice that big of a leak.
That bill is so stupid and so wrong.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-6173-100x100.png\")
@failurate: Her neighbors were just excited the Olympic swim team was training in her backyard ... all that eye candy!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-169958-100x100.png\")
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): maybe some of that water was used to help grow some, uhm, \"plants\" to hemp Michael Phelps' ADHD
I think that this being the time of year that people fill swimming pools is the problem. LOTS of people are using many times as much water as they usually do right now.
@SlappySquirrel: 'round these here parts, people contract a water delivery service to fill their pools. pretty much, they pull up in a large (empty) tanker truck, connect to a fire hydrant, fill tanker, drive to your house, and dump the tanker. repeat until full.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-185032-100x100.png\")
@SlappySquirrel: Well, 140,000 gallons is about a 50' x 70' swimming pool, which would be HUGE for a home pool. Though admittedly, it's only 1/5 the size of an olympic-sized swimming pool.
If the company can prove that the water entered her house, regardless of whether or not she actually used that water for anything, she is responsible to pay the bill in full.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-804913-100x100.png\")
@Loren Fisher: Actually, as many have pointed out, if it just entered her property (water main leak) that would count.
Also, that's kind of the point... it would be neigh impossible for her to use that much water, especially without someone noticing -before- the bill came due.
@Loren Fisher: i think, from a legal perspective, the burden of proof *MIGHT* be on the landowner. although, on second thought, maybe not, since the utilities install meters to prove how much water/gas/electricity a homeowner used
@Loren Fisher: And how do they prove that? Question the water currently running through the pipes and ask how many of its friends have been hanging out in the house for the last month?
That saucy minx! Obviously running wet T-shirt contests by the score.
Yeah, when I think of water hogs, I think of the little ol' lady in the photo above. She spends years using 3,000 gallons of month so that she can get away with using 140,000 gallons in one month and screw the public water company over.
@Hawk07: Yes - she has probably been planning this for years - but it is much more sinister than that. I doubt she has the capabilities to pull this off on her own. If you look in her basement there is a pipe that goes straight through the center of the earth to China!
Did anyone notice the hose running from her home to the Reflecting Pool? Or maybe she's taking in laundry.
If she actually used that much water, she'd be dead by now from heavy metal poisoning. You'd have to pay me to consume D.C.'s tap water.
This must be a computer error of some sort. We had a water main break here a couple months ago that turned River Road into an actual river (necessitating helicopter rescues of drivers) and another last summer that had us all boiling our water for a week, so the piping infrastructure is not in good shape, but a leak that large would be noticeable and affect more than just her. I have no idea how one person without a swimming pool uses 140,000 gallons of water.
As someone who learned first hand this effect after my Ex first moved in, they should check her toilet paper supply. I went from using one roll a month to like 2.5 a month. See if her closet is empty of TP. if it is, she used the water.
@TheStateOnDVD!_GitEmSteveDave:
a roll a month? you are constipated my friend, may I suggest ading some fiber to your diet?
hell with kids around and a full house we go through one a day sometimes...
it may not be an error, like someone mentioned before a leak could easily use that much water.
also, a faucet, hose, or shower left partially open could run at 3.25gpm easily. if the water authority confirmed that the reading is correct my money would be that they are right.
if there is a break in the water line after the meter the city will probably remove the sewage part of the bill which would cut the amount drastically.
it's pretty easy to confirm a leak and confirm that a reading is right, so unless more facts surface my money is on the city
My money is on you having not read the article since two plumbers checked out her house and stated that no one could have used that much water.
@Aladdyn:
\"no one could use that much water\" does not mean \"a leak can not do that much water\"
if she eventually turned off the leaking faucet/hose/shower there would be nothing for a plumber to find.
you don't need a plumber to determine that no one person will use that much water, but in an old house a sink can be doing 3.25 gpm easily, as can a shower or hose.
@Jonathan H. Guthrie: No \"leaking\" fixture can use that much water. period. your talking something open full bore maybe...
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-280282-100x100.png\")
This is remarkably similar to a water bill I received last summer. The plumber was stumped. The water department couldn't have cared less. All I could do was pay the bill and try to sort it out later. So much for that. The next month's bill was the normal rate, like nothing had ever happened.
This sort of thing happenes often enough that you'd think utilities would write in a little code where the bill would get kicked up to a human for checking if usage goes up more than, say, 100%, or well over the average for the area and/or past bills. You know they'd do it quick enough if the payment were to a supplier rather than a customer.
This should have been flagged as a nonissue. Upon finding the error, the utility should have done a daily reading along the interval of 3 days to see if there was a problem with either the meter or a broken line.
This is the case of a bunch of clerks being paid starvation wages and not caring a crap about their jobs.
She looks great for 99.
Jeanette Cohen has a problem. She's 99 years old. WASA has this problem on the back-burner until June 30th? They plan on letting this lady stress out for ten more days before saying or doing anything?
I think this is a problem. Luckily, WASA has a \"report a problem\" email form. While \"absurd utility management\" is not an option for problem type, \"other problem\" is:
There aren't water meters where I live so we just pay a flat monthly rate. To help her cause, I am going to leave the garden hose on 24/7 until this is rectified.
My guess is a bad meter or data entry problem, but I would guess that the water company would be able to figure that out.
99 years old... Does she have a yard? Maybe she left a hose on for a week and didn't realize it... if it's a hilly area, it could drain somewhere and her neighbors won't notice. A senile relative of mine does that all the time... and the first time he did it, the water company thought the meter was busted.
Well, it's possible if she were beaming up two whales and 400 tons of water....
Hate to break it to her but she'll most likely be stuck with the bill. A friend of mine in MI got hit with a $1,000 water bill and he tried to fight it. They changed his meter and sent his old one out to get it tested. They found no fault with it (of course) and he's now stuck paying back the bill as slowly as he will let him. He cannot really not pay them but he can take a damn long time paying it back. He tried going to the news and the city manager but of course he got no attention, press or any sort of favorable resolution.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-488475-100x100.png\")
That's not fair. It shouldn't be allowed for utility companies to make the customer pay for their mistakes.
They should all be shot in the hiney with a water cannon!
*ducks Justice Department goons*
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-342263-100x100.png\")
I saw Quantum of Solace for the first time last night, so now I have all sorts of conspiracy theories running through my mind.
A sillcock for a garden hose would be the fixture with the highest flow rate in the house. The largest ones are 12 gpm. So, let's say that it's all granny's fault and she left the garden hose on. The faucet would have had to be open full bore for eight solid days to use 139,876 gallons. An older showerhead at 3.5gpm would have to be left on almost 28 solid days.
So, either granny is lying about leaving the garden hose on for a week...or the bill is a mistake.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-21380-100x100.png\")
If anyone bothered to apply any common sense to this situation (noticing that the usual usage went from 300 gallons to 139,876 gallons), they'd realize right away that there's something definitely wrong somewhere (billing error or underground leak.)
I always thought that looking at a customer's bill, seeing a ridiculous and unrealistic amount of usage and then insisting on charging for it was a cell-company thing.
Maybe she started growing pot.
Heres a simple solution. Tell the lady not to pay the bill. They can sue her, and she can declare bankruptcy. Its not like she needs good credit for her future, she isnt going to be alive that much longer
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-87038-100x100.png\")
@gaywolverine: She just might need water, however, and if she doesn't pay the bill or get them to correct it, they are likely to turn her water off.
Maybe she has a older style meter.
Some older meters would 'spin' when there were air bubbles in the line.
In bankruptcy they can not shut off her water. If she disputes the bill from the start they can not shut her off until they prove their case. She can say, i did not use that much, and then it is on them to prove she did. Once she declares bankruptcy that bill becomes ZERO.
\"It's just so obvious that, as the plumber said, 'You couldn't use that much water,'\" she told News4's Tom Sherwood.
I don't think that she actually did use this much water...but it is possible. 139,876 gallons in 1 month comes out to about 3.24 gallons per minute...you'd be using at least a couple of gallons per minute if you were to constantly run your faucet and probably more for your shower/bathtub. Or anywhere from 2-5 gallons per flush of the toilet....if someone were sitting and flushing the toilet once every minute or two for an entire month.
Using every house I can ever remember living in/visiting in my life, the water pipes extreme rigidity means that all water use reverberates along every pipe in the house. Unless she is fairly deaf, or has no visitors during the month, or never goes into her basement, or lives next permanently noisy facility that seems wildly out of place for the area she lives in, there is no way any point inside her house, or the outside taps that route through the house itself, could run that flow that long and go unnoticed.
Any non-trivial water flow requires a fair amount of noise to mask, 3.whatever gallons a minute would require never straying more than three feet from the air conditioner. I would notice much smaller flows because my new water meter squeaks, but 3 gpm would be noticed in the basement as the water flow is loudest down there, and nothing down there generates enough noise to mask that kind of flow.
The utility has a credibility problem in my eyes.
@MikeVx: Correction: \"Using every house I can ever remember living in/visiting in my life as an example\"
We had a broken pipe in our back yard that ran solidly for 2 weeks+ and we didn't have a bill that big. (We didn't notice it because our house had been destroyed by a hurricane, we were temporarily living out of state, and we had no clue the city had turned water back on to our destroyed neighborhood.) The pipe was the one that led to our garden hose, and had been broken when our detached garage was picked up off it's foundation, shifted and then collapsed. So, it wasn't a huge pipe, but it had produced a very noticeable pool of water, plus it was producing a decent sound of flowing water. I don't see how someone living near a leak that size could miss it.
FTR, we fought our bill after we found out our neighbors had reported the problem to the city (twice), they'd come out, looked at the problem, and walked away rather than cutting our water. (Yes, we should have turned it off before evacuating, but some things slip through in the chaos.) The city waived our bill (and probably a bunch of others, since we weren't the only ones not living here when they randomly started turning water back on).
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-460777-100x100.png\")
I once got an electric bill for the entire apartment building I lived in. The nice CSR realized that a one bedroom apartment couldn't possibly us that much electricity and reversed it.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-290321-100x100.png\")
Dear Consumerist,
It is time you realize that you have West Coast readers, and over here, WASHINGTON IS A STATE. When you refer to \"Washington\" in the opening of an article, and the \"DC\" later, it's pretty damn annoying.
Just to be safe, here's a picture:
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-605002-100x100.png\")
Could be worse: Atlanta acknowledges the billing programming is giving people horribly inaccurate bills, sometimes in the thousands of dollars, and refuses to do anything about it except cut your water off if you don't pay now and wait for some sort of magical unicorn to resolve the bill sometime in the future.
Ganny go get them .
I think this is part of Obamas plan to prop up the socialist system. Every senior that gets social security will also get a huge bill from a quasi-government entity. The bill can't be disputed. The quasi-government entity will essentially place a lein on all future social security income and the government can fund social security indefinately by simply mailing itself checks!
I have a similar problem, although nothing as drastic as this woman's. My water bill was always at about $20-$25 per month until a couple of years ago, when in February no less, my bill jumped to $90. It's been fluctuating between $60 and $120 ever since. There are two of us here. One is my son, who basically comes home to eat, sleep, and shower. He takes one shower a day. We drink bottled water. I do exactly 3 loads of laundry each week. I've had the water company come out and check for leaks, and they say there are none. I've had plumbers come out and they have found no leaks. For two months, just to experiment, we ate off paper plates, used plastic utensils, and plastic cups. I didn't do dishes except for one load a week. Still the water was high. I started showering only 3x, then 2x a week and used 5 gal water jugs to sponge bath. I did that for 2 months and there was NO DIFFERENCE IN THE WATER BILL.
We have similar problems with the electric bill. And it isn't just us. People who live on our block report similar problems.
I have come to the conclusion that it really isn't how much water, electricity, gas, etc., that you use. It's what the utility companies decide they want to charge you. Consumers have no say in the matter. If the utility company finds itself short one month, they just bill their customers more and say they used more water, electricity, gas, or whatever.
And there's not a doggone thing consumers can do about it. In the old days, people had wells for water, used oil lamps for lighting, and burned wood for heat.
Maybe they knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, we're not \"allowed\" to do these things today. Can you imagine trying to dig a well on your property? Water company won't let you do it. We tried. Because we're within city limits, we can't. We are MANDATED to use city water.
Sometimes I think if everyone just worked together and demanded accountability, things would change. Trying to protest by not using water, electricity or gas doesn't work because, as I said, they'll charge you what they want, anyway.
As for this woman, I empathize with her. I, too, believe in fairness and justice, so I hope she wins her case. I would suggest having not just one, but two plumbing companies check her lines.
And as for those of you who say this is just a catch up bill after YEARS of estimating her bill? HOGWASH. NO UTILITY COMPANY IS GOING TO ESTIMATE A BILL FOR YEARS AND YEARS. In fact, most utility companies do not estimate more than 2 months in a row, unless there is something blocking access, and if it's the water company, those mains are usually on the public sidewalks, yards, etc.
Nope, I think this is probably a case of the water company having a leak somewhere and charging customers to make up for THEIR loss.
Good luck, lady! I hope you are victorious in your court case.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-352646-100x100.png\")
@EmeryNuggletron: I do not know what city you live in, but here in New York City, we get charged a minimum for our water. Does your locale do the same thing? And if so, what is their daily minimum? And, as I mention below, is there any sort of sewer charge as well that gets added to the calculation?
So, even if I went and did what you did, I'd save nothing. And I'm just one person. Right now (until July 1, 2009) we pay $2.31 per Hundred Cubic Feet of water (about 748 gallons). And unless there's a change, we are getting soaked on July 1, 2009 with a 12.9% increase, so the rate goes to $2.61. For my last bill dated May 8, and covering 90 days, the minimum charge of $.31 per day is calculated. But don't forget, we also pay 159% of the water charge as a sewer charge. So my actual daily charge was $.80 per day, or about $72 for the three months.
Even in this god forsaken city, if the meter reader finds something that looks wrong, they leave a note on your door.
Doesn't anyone just do a test to find out if it is possible to run over 3 gal a minute? It takes more than a minute to fill a one gallon container from a kitchen faucet fully open. Even if this sweet lady forgot and left a faucet open (for 24 hours a day for 30 days) should couldn't have used that much water. So, let's not assume she used that much water, let's look at the utility company first! She should not have to prove she didn't use the water, the utility company should be required to prove she did!
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![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-890779-100x100.png\")
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-81067-100x100.png\")
So this isn't a case of it usually running on estimates and someone finally checking the meter for the first time in a couple of years?
@henwy: My meter is checked every month.
@henwy: At least with my water company, it only runs on estimates during the winter. They also say once they do get a proper reading in the Spring, they will reimburse you for anything extra they estimated that you did not actually use, although I think that last part is bullshit.