Toledo couple without water, facing $3,000 bill, gets new answers after contacting 13 Action News

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) — A Toledo couple has no running water, but a bill topping $3,000. They spent weeks trying to get the problem resolved, but nothing changed. Then they called 13 Action News for help, and now they’re getting answers.

Julia Townsend and her husband have been relying on jugs of water just to get through the day. She said she knew something wasn’t right when the bill came in the mail after the house sat empty for more than a year.

“I’m not paying anything on it. So what we have been doing have been using big jugs of water,” Townsend said.

Townsend said no one lived in her daughter’s home from June 2025 until she and her husband moved in this August. They paid the city to turn the water back on. Days later, water started pooling near the meter.

City crews came out three times. Then the water was shut off completely, leaving behind a $3,100 bill.

“They can’t even give us an answer. Only thing we know is the bill went from $52.67 to now $3,100 something,” Townsend said.

Townsend appealed the bill August 25. Weeks went by with no resolution, so she called 13 Action News, which took her questions to the city.

The city confirmed the meter was installed backward but said that wouldn’t change how much water was recorded or billed. The city said the meter was installed in 2023, corrected in early 2025, then replaced again this July. The account was flagged for high flow, a tamper code and an empty pipe code.

Within hours of 13 Action News’ questions to the city, another city crew showed up and left Townsend a new answer: a notice pointing to a slow leak on the city’s side.

“He said, as he could see, there was no service being used for that year. He already seen that and it was a crack in the meter, and it was reading backwards. And we wound up with this astronomical bill that we’re not about to pay,” Townsend said.

The city’s website says reconnecting service requires paying the full past-due balance. But she said she only paid just over $32 to get her water turned back on. She wants to know: if there was a previous balance, how was the water reconnected at all?

“Come out here, figure it out, it’s y’all job. I’m not no water company,” Townsend said.

While the city has given Townsend a notice pointing to a leak on its side, it remains unclear what happened to the original balance or why it hasn’t been resolved.

13 Action News will continue following up with the city and will update this story as more information becomes available.

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