Chauncey Koziol

Sewerage & Water Board admits inaccurate bills, unfair system

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - When Sewerage & Water Board customers get a high bill they believe is inaccurate, the appeals process can take weeks, months or years, leaving customers feeling frustrated and helpless.

Records from the Sewerage & Water Board show delinquent customers owe $55 million.

Among those on the list is Dimitri Poulis, who has become an expert of sorts on water meters.

Poulis can easily find the meter numbers on the three meters at his French Quarter property. The problem, he says, is that only one of those numbers matches the meter numbers listed on his bills from the Sewerage & Water Board.

On two of his three meters, Poulis is getting billed for the wrong meters, and the charges have escalated. On one of the mismatched meters -- one that services a handful of apartments above a T-shirt shop -- the Sewerage & Water Board claims Poulis owes more than $136,000.

Poulis hired a plumber who checked the lines for leaks and found none. Poulis says, despite this, his bill hasn’t gone down, and he’s starting to feel helpless.

“I have a $136,000 bill in my name that I cannot fight or don’t even know who to go to with it,” he said. “I go to the bottom floor of the Sewerage & Water Board. And the ladies tell me this is where I’m supposed to have my grievances to. And then from there, they take care of it.”

But the issue hasn’t been taken care of, and Sewerage & Water Board records show that, many times, no one has checked Poulis’ meters.

Bills show the agency has been estimating the water usage at the apartments, with the last actual reading being made in September 2022. But Poulis doesn’t believe even that reading was accurate, since the number on the meter doesn’t match the one on the bill.

Rene Gonzalez, who oversees customer service for the Sewerage & Water Board, admits the appeals process is too hard for customers to navigate. But Gonzalez stopped short of saying the system is unfair.

Lee Zurik: Is this system fair to Sewerage & Water Board customers?

Rene Gonzalez: “I think the system is not perfect. And we’re working to meet our customers’ expectations.”

Zurik: Is it a fair system?

Gonzalez: “It’s a system that still has opportunities, and we have embraced the challenges that the current system has. This leadership team, under Executive Director (Ghassan) Korban, has been making significant progress to get us to where we need to be, to get us to where the community expects us to be, and transform this utility into the utility they deserve.”

Zurik: “So I take your answer, or lack of answer, to mean that you don’t think it’s fair yet?”

Gonzalez: “I think there’s still opportunities to be the utility that our customers expect.”

Zurik: “So you don’t think it’s fair?”

Gonzalez: “I think we do everything we can to address any inconsistencies in billing. If a customer has received anything other than a good experience, anything other than a bill that they believe is accurate, we would ask customers to contact us to have an investigation, to send field staff to test the equipment, to make sure that what they’re paying is what they’re consuming.”

Zurik: “You seem to not want to say it’s fair, but you seem not to want to say its unfair, either.”

Gonzalez: “I don’t think it’s a perfect system. That’s what I’ll say.”

Gonzalez admitted some billing issues are the results of false readings by current employees.

“Like in any endeavor that requires human intervention … we know that we have inaccurate reads,” Gonzalez said.

The Sewerage & Water Board has a list of unpaid bills, with some of those customers allegedly owing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That includes Skyview Terrace Apartments in Algiers, which the utility claims owes $270,622. The owner says the matter is in litigation. And Art Space Limited Partnership, with a bill of $174,988. And Two Oaks Apartment in New Orleans East has a bill of more than $137,000 at one property.

Some residents on the list, with addresses across the city, also have bills near or topping $100,000.

The Sewerage & Water Board told Fox 8 it believes most of the customers do not have false readings.

“I think the great majority would be money that is owed to the utility,” Gonzalez said.

Fox 8 wanted to know how the charges got so high, and why customers weren’t paying. We called multiple people and businesses on the list. Many had similar stories, telling us their bills shot up, they reported the concerns of an incorrect reading to the board, and hired plumbers who found no leaks on their properties. Despite notes from those plumbers, many told us they still couldn’t get their bills lowered and had been paying what they thought they owed to keep their water from being turned off.

The Sewerage & Water Board says bills keep going up because it doesn’t have the staff needed to shut off water to delinquent homes and businesses. The utility says it only has the capacity to shut off water to 300 accounts per month. Gonzalez says at the current staffing levels, shutting off water to each listed delinquent address would take a couple of years.

Some customers told Fox 8 they worry their meters aren’t working correctly. Gonzalez admits that could be possible, calling the meters “very, very old.”

The utility has started installing “smart meters,” which can be read remotely. The utility says those readers will cut down on human error, but likely won’t be completely installed until the end of 2025.

Until then, the Sewerage & Water Board says customers will have to keep wading through a process that Gonzalez admits is too burdensome. That includes Laura Malone, who lives in Lakeview.

Malone said that late last year, she realized she hadn’t received a water bill for several months. When she checked her balance online, she was shocked to find a bill for $27,382, with a due date of Christmas Day.

Malone called her landlord, who sent out a plumber to verify there were no leaks on the property. The plumber charged $325 and signed a letter verifying he found no leaks. But despite the letter, Malone said the bill didn’t drop.

“I go the gamut from being incredulous to being angry and upset and also exhausted, because I’m trying to start a private (social work) practice,” Malone said. “And I’ve spent more time the last two months trying to figure out what to do about this than I ever dreamed I was going to be spending on that.”

Malone agreed the appeals process is too difficult for customers.

“All I have heard, from everybody else who I’ve talked to, is that … I’m not one of the few, I’m one of the many,” Malone said. “And with all of us making all these complaints, why can’t something be done?”

Fox 8 asked the Sewerage & Water Board about both Poulis’ and Malone’s bills.

Poulis said that after our interview, the Sewerage & Water Board sent him a letter admitting one of the bills had an incorrect meter associated with it. However, that was for a lower bill. Poulis says he hasn’t had any resolution to the $136,000 bill.

Malone says her bill was corrected after Fox 8 began looking into her case, and that the $27,000 charge was removed.

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