By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
YACHATS – One Yachats man was more than a little surprised when he opened his August water bill expecting the usual $120 to $135 charge but found instead a bill for $1,866.
It was not the first anomaly on Stephen Isaac’s combined water and sewer bill. In May he received a bill for $876.
That bill was dismissed by the city and chalked up to a misread meter. But writing off a bill is not city policy and was a staff mistake back than, explained deputy city recorder Kimmie Jackson.
When Isaac sought relief for the August bill, the city sent out wastewater treatment plant supervisor Dave Buckwald, who checked the meter Sept. 15 and determined it was not only working but benefiting Isaac by charging less than his actual use. And no leaks were detected by the meter.
Isaac lives alone on 11 acres at the top of Reeves Circle and has neither a garden, pool, hot tub nor livestock to water. He was stumped. He sent a letter to Jackson explaining that his daily water use is limited to one shower, one dishwashing, two cups of coffee, filling his cat’s water bowl and 5-8 toilet flushes a day.
“There is no way I used that much water in a month,” Isaac wrote.
The city checked its data and systems and they too were stumped. Jackson suggested Isaac appeal the bill to the city council – the only option available.
Councilors and public works staff listened to Isaac’s plight during Thursday’s city council meeting. They asked if perhaps his toilet was running or if there could be some other leak at the house. They asked if someone could have tapped into his water line somewhere on the property.
Isaac said he had no leaks at the house and only one other water junction on the property, which is turned off. And no neighbors close enough to be siphoning water from his line.
“The water is going somewhere,” said councilor Greg Scott. “The question is how? It seems to be staff has done a pretty reasonable job of validating that the equipment is operating correctly.”
Looking over a printout of Isaac’s monthly bills dating back to 2020, Mayor Craig Berdie noted that some of Isaac’s bills were above minimum use and “running rather high in general without even these anomalies.”
He encouraged Isaac to hire a plumber to run a complete check of all the lines on his property “To validate the usage so we have some assurance that there isn’t some kind of phantom leak that’s coming up intermittently.
“It concerns me,” Berdie said. “This is quite a bit of water.”
Isaac’s water use for August was 129 units, according to meter readings, which at 748 gallons a unit is a whopping 96,492 gallons.
The city’s bill is tabulated for both water and sewage – approximately half is water coming in and half is sewage going out. In July water and sewer rates in Yachats increased by 7 percent.
Breaking down the numbers even further, that is 2.16 gallons of water a minute traveling through the system, explained public works’ staff.
The city council decided to write-off the $933 sewer charge half of the bill and instead charged Isaac his average $53 monthly charge.
With the condition he hire a plumber, the council charged Issac his average of $59 a month for water and then split the $880 difference with him culminating in a final August bill of $499.
“With the understanding furthermore,” said Scott, “that should this be repeated, no such relief will be available.”
Issac told YachatsNews on Saturday that he has a plumber and leak detection company scheduled to check his house and property this week.
• Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
My mother was a property manager for a few decades and she had a tenant that had the same thing happen. In the end after months of the high bills, maintenance people and city workers finding nothing wrong discovered that the cat was flushing the toilet, watching the water go down and would flush the toilet again after the water stop running in the tank.
I believe just looking at the water meter will tell you right away if there’s a leak.