Last fall the Atlanta Department of Watershed Management announced 541 customers would receive refunds for overbilling due to improperly installed water meters. Dozens were entitled to more than $5,000 apiece.
Demetrius Harris was waiting for a refund long before then.
Harris was overbilled more than $5,000 by Watershed in recent years, she said, dutifully paying her monthly water bills even when they spiked from around $50 to upwards of $300.
Finally, the Southwest woman called the agency in early 2013 and asked them to review her account. Watershed sent a worker to check her meter, she said, who discovered flaws with the system.
When she received her next bill, she was floored to find a roughly $5,500 credit on her bill, she said. Elated, she asked for it to be returned.
More than a year later, she’s still waiting for the refund while Watershed deducts her monthly bill from the credit, she said.
“I paid all of my money to them with no problem, so I want the refund,” said Harris, who lives on a fixed income. “It would help me out with other bills.”
The Atlanta City Council must approve refunds of more than $5,000. Watershed spokeswoman Scheree Rawles said the city council approved Harris’s refund on March 31, and the check is now being processed by the city finance department.
Still, it’s unclear why the issue has taken more than a year to resolve.
Last fall the Atlanta City Council approved a Watershed request to return $737,000 to hundreds of customers.
The refunds were a result of the Watershed Department’s 2011 small meter audit, which reviewed nearly 160,000 water meters installed between 2007 and 2009 with the aim of improving billing accuracy, identifying leaks and cutting the time it takes to read meters.
The department serves 180,000 accounts in Atlanta and in neighboring jurisdictions, and spent about $35 million on the meter installation project.
The audit found that nearly two-thirds of the meters had problems, such as broken or ill-fitted meter lids. Few of those issues affected billing, Watershed Commissioner Jo Ann Macrina said in an October interview with The AJC.
And while 99 percent of water usage was accurately reported, 0.7 percent of meters —- or 1,085 —- were found to cause billing errors. About 520 of those faulty meters resulted in overbilling between 2007 and 2013.
Rawles said Harris’s issue was discovered outside of the small meter audit.
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