Disabled west Houston renters frustrated by $20,000 water bill caused by leaking pipe
Matt Dougherty
HOUSTON — Two women living in a west Houston rental home say they have been slapped with a $20,000 water bill.
The bill was correct. It turned out a leaking underground pipe was the source, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of water into the ground for years.
“There is no way two disabled people can use 100,000 gallons of water a month,” said resident Cheryl Hicks.
The home is owned by landlord Dien Tran but the utilities are in the tenants’ names.
Hicks, a 60-year-old retired woman with congestive heart failure, lives with her roommate Valerie Leonard who has pancreatic cancer.
The women say they noticed their bill went from $40 each month to over $100 a month in May 2017. After that it continued to rise upwards of $1,500 per month.
Hicks says she called the city to come read the meter to figure out what was happening, but the meter was not read until many months later.
A City of Houston Public Works spokesperson says there is no record of that call for service but verified a worker flagged the water usage problem and alerted the women in February.
Sign-up for the #HTown Rush Newsletter
This email will be delivered to your inbox once a day in the morning.
The spokesperson says it was not the meter that was the problem.
After various plumbing repairs the leak was ultimately identified to be coming from a pipe buried in the front yard. It was fixed in July.
“I’d just make the payment I’d normally pay and ignore there was a $1,500 bill,” Hicks said.
That bill ballooned to more than $20,000 by December with late fees and interest.
The water was cut off Tuesday when the bill was not paid.
KHOU 11 spoke with Tran, the landlord, who says he would be willing to pay $10 or $20 extra a month to help pay the bill.
Hicks received a phone call from a third-party collections department representative late Friday afternoon stating she could have her water temporarily restored if she agreed to pay $200, show proof the leak was fixed, and agree to make more payments toward the $20,000 balance.
Hicks says she and Leonard will be looking for an attorney in an attempt to hold Tran responsible for the remaining balance of the bill.
