Photo by lorigoldberg

There’s been an abundance of messages this week on the Yahoo! Group for residents of the HIll East neighborhood with complaints about startlingly high bills from the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.

In a string of emails, one resident writes that after usually receiving bills ranging between $18 and $20, D.C. Water slapped the resident with a $123 for January. The justification on the bill? A huge spike in the number of CCFs—the units by which water utilities gauge their readings, one CCF being equal to 100 cubic feet—recorded on her house’s water meter. Usually, the complainant’s household uses between one and two CCFs a month. The water bill for January put the number at 16.

There are several possible reasons for a surge in one’s water bill, but in the case of a five- or six-fold jump, it’s probably because of faulty plumbing, D.C. Water spokeswoman Pamela Mooring said.

“Generally there is a reason, if there’s a running faucet or leak somewhere in the household,” she said. Mooring added that the resident might not have been taking advantage of the utility’s high-usage notification alert system, which warns customers if their water usage spikes over a period of several days. The digital meters D.C. Water uses allow it to take twice-daily measurements of customers’ water habits and potentially spot trends of greater usage.

“When there’s something like a leaking toilet it can spike for days,” Mooring said. “You’d be surprised how much water a leaking toilet uses. Could be several hundred dollars.”

Back on the Hill East message board, the resident with the $123 bill said there was no excess water usage in January.

There is no dishwasher or washing machine in the house, the (one) toilet was not and is not running, no one was or is taking hour-long showers, there were not and are no leaks or drippy faucets, and being the dead of winter, there are no cars being washed nor are there are any lawns or gardens being watered.

So, assuming the resident’s plumbing is, in fact, in tip-top condition, something is amiss here. For each hundred cubic feet of usage, D.C. Water’s rates for fiscal 2012 charge $3.34 for water, another $3.96 for sewers, a 15-cent “Right of Way” fee and a 49-cent payment-in-lieu-of taxes fee, also known as the PILOT fee. Along with a few other environmental and service fees, D.C. Water estimates a household that uses an average of 6.69 CCFs of water a month should receive a bill for about $65.

The Hill East resident with the big bill has scheduled a site visit for later this week; if that doesn’t turn up a leaky faucet or broken pipe, it’ll only raise more suspicions.