Phoenix officials looking into high water bills, meter issues

PHOENIX — Officials in Phoenix said Monday they were taking steps to figure out why water bills in a certain part of the city have skyrocketed as of late while other customers received free water.

Residents in the Ahwatukee neighborhood have reported receiving bills for thousands of dollars and officials were unsure what was causing the spike.

The Ahwatukee Foothill News said one homeowners’ associations received a bill for $6,500. The city said the group used more than a million gallons to water two small parks, which the HOA said was impossible.

“An engineer said that, with a million gallons, the water in the park would be 23 feet deep,” Steve Manolis, the HOA board’s vice president, told the newspaper.

City assistant water manager Troy Hayes said a random sample of 400 homes found some problems with the meters.

“One of the meters was under-registering, meaning that more water was actually flowing through it than it was actually reading — there was some free water going to the customer,” he said. “The other two meters that we had were actually not reading at all.”

Hayes said the city was going to hire an expert to look into the matter.

“We’re going to hire a third-party consultant to evaluate our system from the meter to the bill and see if they can identify anything,” he said.

KTAR News’ Ali Vetnar contributed to this report.

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