HOUSTON — A Houston family called KHOU 11 about their $5,000 water bill, and a day after the story ran on TV, the city responded. Mayor Sylvester Turner said he's aware of an increase in unexpected high water bills but said they only represent 1% of customers.
"They will follow up, that I can assure you, they will follow up," Turner said.
Still, the family said they're stuck in the 1% and they haven't been able to get answers for months.
"We just want to move on, we want to pay a fair price for our water in the city," Arwen Mallet said.
Mallet, the homeowner dealing with the huge bill, said she has been fighting the charges since last summer.
"For about 10 to 12 years we have lived here -- we have averaged 4,000 to 7,000 gallons each month," she said.
But that changed with a bill last summer.
"Starting in June, Houston Public Works says we used 67,000 for that month and in July they said we used 97,000," she said.
She said she opened a complaint with the city and kept paying her normal monthly amount.
“When you are the fourth-largest city in the United States and we send out over a half million bills a month, you are going to run into some errors," Turner said.
The errors are the reason Turner asked Public Works last week to come to address City Council. During a committee meeting, a spokeswoman for the department said incorrect bills make up .8% of what they do. Council members did bring up concerns about incorrect bills not getting corrected fast enough.
One of the things Public Works noted was aging infrastructure. In 2020, the council approved a project to replace old water meters, but the spokeswoman told the council the department is two years behind on installing them because of supply chain issues.
As for why this family got a $5,000 bill, Turner vowed to find out what happened.
"You are bringing it to our attention, and I feel very confident that they will hear something about it," Turner said.
Late Tuesday afternoon, KHOU 11 heard back from Public Works. They said they reimbursed the family about $800, but that doesn’t fix the thousands they still owe.
The city said they could speed up the process if they filled out a leak adjustment form. If not, it will all go to a hearing on March 23.
Mallet said they asked for what's called an administrative hearing. She said they got an official letter from the city saying the hearing was going to happen on March 3. But, when they logged in for the virtual meeting last Friday, no one from the city was there.
"We took our time off of work last Friday and sat on a virtual meeting for 45 minutes and the city no-showed," Mallet said.
Mallet said she was later told that the letter from the city actually had a typo and the hearing was supposed to be on March 23.