Fort Lauderdale residents say their water bills are drowning them.
They told CBS New Miami that their water bills have skyrocketed over the last two years, and they don’t know why.
“I’ve spent $5,500 so far in plumbers, irrigation specialists, someone came and scuba dived in my pool to check if there was a leak. I know there’s no leak in my pool. My pool doesn’t have an auto fill. No leaky toilets, I had all the plumbers come and I’m not going to recover that money,” said Jackie Waldman.
Waldman lives in a single family, 1,500 square foot home. Over the summer, she said she received a high bill and someone from the city came to check her meter.
“They said it was under reading,” she said. “Your meter was actually under reading. They told me that I used 55,000 gallons of water in one month.”
Kim Marcus has a similar story.
“I would say I’ve probably spent between – over $4,000 in the past 12 months on water, and that’s like one-fifth of my salary,” said Marcus.
Last Tuesday, the city of Fort Lauderdale held a workshop to help residents to understand and manage their water bills.
CBS News Miami approached Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Ben Sorensen. He represents the district where many frustrated residents live.
He touted new water meters that are being installed. But they won’t go online until all 65,000 of them are installed. That’s not expected until the middle of next year.
“This provides hour-by-hour real time data of what the flow is,” Sorensen said. “What that allows is through A.I. analysis is to immediately pop-up minute by minute if there’s an overage, if there’s a potential leak so we can flag it and immediately begin to investigate.”
CBS News Miami asked the commissioner how so many people in the city could have these incredibly high bills.
“It could be the city’s fault. We could’ve misread the meter, we periodically if we’re unable to get a meter reading, we’ll estimate,” he said. “So, there’s a host of issues that could be the city’s fault and that’s where we need to investigate.”
Sorensen urges residents to reach out to the city with billing issues. But residents say they keep asking for answers and feel like they’re not getting anywhere.
“I feel like people are just beaten into submission,” Glenn Stansbury. said. “You’re held hostage. If you don’t pay your bill, we’re going to shut your water off. If they shut your water off, then what do you do?”
The city told CBS News Miami explanations for these high-water bills vary on an individual basis. Again, they encouraged residents to reach out to the city for help should they have this problem.
There is an appeals process and credits given when there is an issue.
But that may not be enough for these residents who are weighing a class-action lawsuit.
That’s something else the city acknowledged during that meeting on Tuesday.
