Watchdog group forms as Bethlehem residents decry mysteriously steep water bills

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Bethlehem City Council’s public works committee is set to meet 6 p.m. Tuesday to discuss resident complaints from the past year about costly and sometimes unexplainable water bills.

In light of the charges and what they say is little explanation from city officials, some residents and others interested have banded together to form “The Drip” — a brainchild of Bethlehem residents Mark and Sally Will-Weber.

The public Facebook page, kicked off in November, has 233 members as of 10 a.m. Monday. It serves as “a ‘watchdog’ citizen-consumer group striving for Water and Sewer oversight and accountability in Bethlehem, PA,” according to its description.

Here you’ll find public discussion about shared experiences, links to news articles from around the country describing some similar billing situations and ultimately a place for some “cathartic relief,” Mark Will-Weber told LehighValleyNews.com.

“None of us knew that this was happening to dozens of us,” he said.

The water and sewer department has all the power in these cases, and it’s on the consumer to prove that any particular amount of water charged for wasn’t actually used, he said.

“It’s like fighting a tank with a peashooter — or squirt gun,” Will-Weber joked. “That’d probably be a better comparison since we’re talking water.”

How we got here

How did these exorbitant water bills become the focus of an official city committee?

Imagine you head overseas for a month to get married or have an adventure alongside the person you love, only to come back to a mysteriously steep water bill and no leak or busted pipe to show for it.

On top of that, the city’s water and sewer department concludes your meter is working just fine.

That has happened to at least a few Bethlehem residents in the past year, including the Will-Webers.

The couple have lived in their Northside home for over four decades.

They decided to go visit family on the West Coast and also take a hiking trip in New Zealand — a 35-day excursion in December 2022 and January 2023 — and had their neighbors check on their home, inside and out, twice each week.

Upon return, they said, their quarterly bill received in March 2023 read the couple had used 54,000 gallons of water and would have to pay $523.93 — and they weren’t even in the country for some of that time.

Their amount used during the entirety of 2022 wasn’t even half of that, they said.

'Dry as the Sahara'

Trying to make sense of the bill, Mark Will-Weber said he hadn’t even thought to check the condition of his basement.

Making his way down, he expected water to be at least up to his ankles based on the price. But it was “dry as the Sahara,” he said.

“We don’t have a caved-in ceiling, our basement’s dry, none of our toilets are running,” Will-Weber reflected.

The Will-Webers were told by the water and sewer department to hire a plumber to check for further issues, they said.

Will-Weber said lots of folks probably would just cut their losses and pay the bill at that point, or at least call the water department to get on a payment plan since it’s almost too much trouble to fight.

“I think they deliberately, purposely mislead you up front when they tell you that you can contest it and you can get your own plumber,” Will-Weber said.

“You naturally assume that what the plumber finds or doesn’t find is gonna have some influence.”

The consensus from the plumber? There were no broken pipes, leaky faucets, or running toilets to speak of, Will-Weber said.

A water and sewer representative even came out to their home, found no issues and recommended replacing their 31-year-old meter with a new “smart” unit, which would feature real-time data-sharing capabilities. Their old unit was over a decade past its shelf life.

According to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, state law doesn’t permit customers to opt out of a smart meter installation.

Will-Weber is clear about his qualms with these meter models, referencing issues that could arise from faulty software, hardware and improper installation.

Trying to fight it

From there, he said the couple kept an eye on their usage, usually ranging from 40 to 120 gallons daily.

With that, it came time to contest the bill. The couple said they hand-delivered their letter to the water department and mayor.

Officials said the couple still had to foot the brunt of the bill anyway, while the city would waive the sewer fee.

The $140 credit would’ve been about enough money to cover the cost of the plumber, Will-Weber said.

That amount was pitched by the water department based on the Will-Webers’ average consumption over the past three years; the bill in question was about $240 over their average quarterly charge.

“Now I refused to do it because I honestly feel like they do that to try to placate you in some way,” Will-Weber said.

“And most people are going to grab that because it does lessen your financial sting — but I really feel like it was sort of like, ‘OK you’re very upset, we can see that. We’ll offer you this, now go away.’”

Unsatisfied after being told they had to consult the city legal department if choosing not to accept the sewer fee credit, the Will-Webers said they called the appropriate people but never got a ring back.

At this point, the couple’s meter was replaced. But the delinquent notices and late fees kept coming.

They said they were told in May to file a formal billing dispute — something they said they were never made aware of during all the back-and-forth.

Their dispute was denied within 48 hours, they said.

They were then told to take their problem up with the state Public Utility Commission, they said.

Only after sitting on the phone for hours, they said, did a PUC representative finally tell them the commission had no jurisdiction in Bethlehem.

The couple ultimately paid their bill. But it’s not over for them.

The Will-Webers approached Bethlehem City Council about the issue last October.

The city's reasoning

Will-Weber shared with LehighValleyNews.com an email from city Water and Sewer Resources Director Edward Boscola on July 13, 2023. It provided the department’s reasoning in response to the couple’s complaint.

Boscola said the household’s meter was tested “per our standard procedure” at three different flow rates — one-quarter, two and five gallons per minute — and was concluded to be reading accurately.

Will-Weber had suggested there could have been an issue with the “ten-thousand” digit on the meter.

“Your claim that the meter’s 10,000 digit turned over several times is akin to a car odometer skipping from 10,000 to 20,000 to 30,000 miles,” Boscola wrote in response.

“These types of errors just do not happen with the kind of technology in place (even for a 20+ year old meter).

"The City’s old meters remain quite accurate up until the point of typical failure, which is they stop turning altogether, registering zero consumption.”

Boscola said sometimes the culprit could involve toilet leakage, “whether through a minor pass through the flapper valve or wide-open flush can vary considerably.”

The Will-Webers also got their lead service line replaced and a new curb stop installed during the process, according to Boscola.

Thoughts, actions from elected officials

City Councilman Bryan Callahan, who also serves as public works committee chairman, said there has to be something more solidified in place to handle this kind of scenario, especially when the homeowners bring in professionals who don’t find any issues.

“The meters that they had were extremely old; something went astray,” Callahan said.

“The city should have a solution for these rare situations, and that’s what I’m working toward.”

Rep. Jeanne McNeil, D-Lehigh, has introduced State House Bill 905, which calls for an entity overseeing municipal utilities to notify a customer if their water usage over the course of a month has increased by over half of its typical average.

Some of the bill’s other local sponsors include Reps. Steve Samuelson, D-Northampton; Robert Freeman, D-Northampton; and Michael Schlossberg, D-Lehigh.

That bill appears to be before the Consumer, Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee following its introduction on April 12, 2023.

Leading up to Tuesday's council committee meeting, Boscola provided a memo regarding the high bills and broader efforts to replace outdated meters for residential customers.

Here are some of the takeaways from that document:

• The city serves around 37,000 metered customers;
• There are three types of water meters among those customers: positive displacement, electromagnetic and turbine;
• Officials aim to install new Sensus iPERL electromagnetic meters, at a rate of 4,000 units annually, over the next five years;
• All residential customers should have those new meters by 2028;
• The new units will automatically transmit meter readings to the city billing system via radio signal;
• With 12,000 currently within that umbrella, the city wants to have 95% of its customers on board by 2028;
• These new units collect meter data by the hour and ping the city and customer if a residential flow reads more than 3,000 gallons per day; 
• Over the past nine years, 28 “formal” requests for meter tests have been filed with the city; they all came back showing 100% accuracy;
• Stopped meters in the amount of 650 have been identified and replaced over the past decade; the city doesn’t back-charge customers experiencing this issue.

Another example

Following the lead of the Will-Webers, city council heard from another resident in December who experienced nearly the same issue.

Abiel Solitario, a teacher at Northeast Middle School, went on a four-week vacation to Europe to get married.

She said she came back to quite a present — a water bill charging her for 48,000 gallons used while she was gone.

Solitario called the water department, sat on hold numerous times and still didn’t learn much when she finally spoke with someone, she said.

Solitario said she was asked if her home had any leaks, if any toilets were running and if somebody could’ve had access to her outside spigot without her knowing.

The spigot didn’t work anyway, she said.

“It’s just been very frustrating because there doesn’t seem to be a process to actually address the issue and to figure out why I was charged for 48,000 gallons — especially when my bills in the past, my highest one before it had 10,000 gallons but I was usually resting at like seven or 8,000 gallons a quarter,” Solitario said.

Her father, Scott Sine, not only lives next door but worked for two decades as the chief engineer of H.T. Lyons, an area mechanical contracting company.

“As a dad would,” Sine said, he made sure to check out the one-bathroom house before the trip for these very issues.

“There was no way there’s 48,000 gallons disappearing out of that toilet or out of that water,” he said.

“It was not happening.”

Sine said he didn’t intend to make any digs at the water department, but was clear this was a “high-level issue” that called for an investigation by an outside agency.

“Whenever these types of things happened in my career, it was always a control issue,” he said.

“It could be with the firmware, it could be with the software, it could be working with many things.

“The water department will not have the internal capability to check out this problem; it’s not possible. They don’t have the skill set.”

Some cases can be 'indeterminate'

Later that meeting, Boscola was asked to share more on what could have led to these excessive bills.

“Every customer can have slightly different circumstances as to what’s going on,” Boscola said.

“But generally speaking, our metering infrastructure is very reliable.”

He said customers generally reach out when these situations arise and his team does what they can to resolve the issue.

And “nine times out of 10,” the astronomical rates come from “some real-world usage.” He named leaks, faucets left running and outdoor watering systems as some examples of the key culprits.

He even said a resident not long before the meeting had an irrigation system leaking in their backyard for two months, and his team worked through that situation with the customer.

“Now, having said that, there are cases, very rare, where the cause is indeterminate,” Boscola said.

“Case in point: the [Will-Webers] who were here earlier today, we test the meter, the meter checks out fine.

“They say they didn’t use the water. We say, ‘Well, here’s what the meter says, and it just tested accurately.’”

Boscola said those are the parameters his team works with, including an ordinance that dictates when the water department is actually allowed to provide a usage credit to the customer.

Article 911.08, or the “Water Tariff and Ordinance,” reads:

“No adjustment of amount registered is permitted for any reason except malfunction of meter, or upon a positive showing by the customer in instances of excessive usage that the usage resulted from circumstances beyond his ability to control.”

“Honestly, there are odd cases with 37,000 meters, where something just goes screwball and we can’t figure it out,” Boscola said.

“But we try to be as fair as possible.”

Not about the money

Mark Will-Weber said it’s not even about the money at this point. He just wants better for his neighbors around the city, as well as more transparency from officials.

“You talk to these guys long enough they’ll convince you that the Titanic didn’t sink because it hit an iceberg; it sank because the captain had a loose toilet flapper in his cabin,” he said, laughing.

He said he’s left wondering where lies the “line of absurdity.”

Will-Weber just may never find out.

“It’s a Sisyphean task, for sure — but you know, maybe worth it,” he said of his efforts behind “The Drip.”

“Some days it’s actually fun. Sometimes the good guys win a round.”