Atlanta water manager defends billing practices, cutoffs

Atlanta does not have a problem with its water billing, it has customers who don’t pay its bills.

In fact, the city is “doing a wonderful job” dealing with its 1.2 million customers.

Those were the highlights from Rob Hunter, commissioner of Atlanta’s Watershed Management Department, during a 45-minute session with the media Wednesday to address a flood of public complaints.

Some other words from Hunter: If customers are complaining about getting cut off, it’s because they haven’t paid their bills and deserve to go dry, by and large.

Complaints on the city’s 150,000 metered accounts average about 5 percent any given month —- even now as Atlanta has placed a surcharge on bills to correct a mistake from July. That means accounts in dispute number about 7,500 per month, or more than 89,000 per year.

Atlanta cut off an average of 7,422 water customers for nonpayment every month in 2008. It stopped service to 2,933 customers per month in 2007.

City code requires Hunter’s staff to cut off users before they get 30 days’ delinquent. He said they are operating close to that mandate now, so someone could be cut off a day after they go delinquent.

“I want to make the case we are treating everybody fairly and equally,” Hunter said. “We are doing what city code wants and what our customers want.”