Baltimore resident gets water bill of almost $10K

BALTIMORE (WBFF) - Lauren Anderson says she spent months trying to sort out with Baltimore City's Department of Public Works why her water bills were low. Then, February's bill came.

Her bill shows she was billed $9,707.67.

"It's preposterous. Who uses almost 800,000 gallons of water in a single month?" Anderson wondered. "Not really knowing what other options I had - because DPW had proved to be so unhelpful and unresponsive up to that point - I paid a plumber."

Anderson says she paid a plumber nearly $4,000 to investigate whether she had a leak. The plumber told her DPW incorrectly routed her water, where she was supplying water for all of Archer Street in Southwest Baltimore.

The public works department said in a statement Monday afternoon that the meter situation was fixed April 4 and the bill was adjusted to $118 on April 27.

"This property got their first bill under the new billing system in October 2017. Prior to that they did not have a meter and any water usage to them was essentially free," said DPW spokesperson Kurt Kocher.

"When the meter was finally installed last year it was incorrectly connected to the (small) main line and not the service line to the house. That means that all water running through it was being metered, and the metering was correct, but it was charged to this property," he explained via email. "This was not part of the large meter changeover program, but rather an addition since there was not a meter there before this. It was performed by maintenance crews and not our contractor who switched out the other 400 K meters. Sometime during this period there was a water main break on this line and that shot the bill even higher since this was an incorrectly metered main."

Anderson says all she wants to do is pay an honest bill for the water she's used.

"It should be a pretty straight-forward thing in a pretty large city on the East Coast, and it's proven to be one of the most complicated situations I've ever encountered," Anderson said. "I'm looking forward to transitioning out of the city and moving somewhere where it's easier to get your basic needs met."