Augusta residents complain about higher-than-usual water bills

Some Augusta residents have recently received unusually high water bills, prompting calls for investigations.

A member of the Facebook group “Connect Augusta” shared her $5,000 water bill, which claims she used nearly two times the amount of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, according to WJBF.

“We were made aware of an issue on Facebook with a customer who received a bill that was very, very high,” Augusta Utilities public information officer Leadra Collins told the station. “It was a meter-reading error, so it was just when the meter reader read the meter, it’s as simple as kind of having a mistype in a text message. So it was input incorrectly.”

Other residents say their bills are too high to be correct. Cassandra Loftin shared her bills with the station, one claiming she used more than 40,000 gallons of water.

“So on April 14, I got a bill for $72.95, and I paid that,” Loftin said. “Two days later, they sent me another bill through email that said I owed $229.83, and then two or three hours later I got a text from the water company saying that I owed $432.49. So all within one week of time, they’re sending me multiple bills.”

Loftin paid the original bill but says she won’t pay the others until she gets some answers.

“We are seeing an increase in watering, whether it’s their lawn or gardens or things of that nature, and so we can go back and kind of look at the data for some of our meters to see what your usage is,” Collins said.

A leak can also cause a dramatic increase in water usage, according to Collins.

Any residents suspecting errors on their water bill can call Augusta Utilities at 706-821-1851.