Bethlehem residents say they came home from vacation to huge water bills - lehighvalleylive.com

Bethlehem residents say they came home from vacation to huge water bills - lehighvalleylive.com

Mark and Sally Will-Weber aren’t ready to let their experience with an exorbitant Bethlehem water bill go.

The West Elizabeth Avenue homeowners returned Tuesday night to a meeting of city council to announce they’d started a Facebook group, called The Drip, to highlight what they say are problems with water meters racking up inexplicably high bills.

They’re not alone across the United States, they say. Nor were they alone in their complaint at Tuesday’s meeting.

Another Bethlehem homeowner, Abiel Sine, said she came home to Hawthorne Road from a three-week trip to Europe to a quarterly bill claiming she’d used 48,000 gallons of water. Bethlehem says typical residential usage is 14,000 gallons per quarter.

The Will-Webers’ bill was for 54,000 gallons of water in a quarter — a three-month stretch when they, too, were out of the country, visiting New Zealand, they said.

Ed Boscola, Bethlehem’s director of water and sewer resources, said he directed the city’s billing department to investigate Sine’s claims. For the Will-Webers, the excess usage during the first quarter of 2023 remains unexplained, Boscola said.

Mark Will-Weber said a plumber inspected their home and found no broken or leaky pipes or other explanation for the high bill.

The city removed their meter and it passed an accuracy test, though the city then replaced it since it was more than 20 years old, Boscola said.

“We also discovered they had a lead service line and that was replaced as well,” he told lehighvalleylive.com. “Unfortunately in cases like this, if the meter checks out we have little recourse for billing adjustment except to discount the sewer portion of the bill in certain circumstances, which we did in this case.”

Mark Will-Weber, first appearing before city council at the Oct. 17 meeting, held up the city’s sewer-discount reimbursement check, stared down Boscola and left it behind on the public-comment lectern.

“I don’t want the money,” Mark Will-Weber said. “My money’s gone.”

Rather, he believes he and his wife were “victimized” by the city. Sally Will-Weber also spoke out Tuesday, calling for a policy or subcommittee to better review “these outrageous bills that are anomalies.”

Sine’s father and neighbor, Scott Sine, said he’s retired from 20 years as chief engineer for H.T. Lyons and that he checked out her one-bathroom home. There’s no outdoor faucet that might have been running, the two said, and the usage is simply unexplained.

Both complaints came from residents who had been out of the country, and Scott Sine wondered whether that’s a link that could explain the problem.

“When things are repeatable, there is an answer,” he said.

The Will-Webers said they’d drawn some 80 members to their Facebook group as of Tuesday. They hope to maintain The Drip as a “watchdog group” asking for “transparency and accountability,” Mark Will-Weber said.

City Councilwoman Grace Crampsie Smith asked Boscola on Tuesday if there was a way to improve reviewing water bill issues.

Boscola told her that in nine out of 10 complaints, “it’s because of real-world usage,” such as a leak or a faucet left running.

“There are odd cases with 37,000 meters where something just gets screwball and we can’t figure out what’s going on,” he said. “But we try to be as fair as possible.”

“Outrageous water bills” are the focus of legislation introduced during Pennsylvania’s 2023-24 legislative session by state Rep. Jeanne McNeill, D-Lehigh. Specifically, her House Bill 905 focuses on leaking pipes, according to her sponsorship memo, “by requiring municipal authorities or public utility companies to provide notice to utility customers if they determine that the property’s water usage has increased by 50% above average for one month.

“The municipal authority or public utility shall make reasonable efforts to inform the utility customer of the increase in usage and assist the utility customer in identifying any potential leaks or other wasteful inefficiencies on the property.”

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.