Empty Atlanta lot with no water line gets nearly $30K bill, owner appeals and loses

ATLANTA - A small metro Atlanta business owner fought the water company over a large bill. He lost. He appealed. Lost again. But the devil is in the details. The address in question didn't even have a water line. 

The FOX 5 I-Team has reported for months about the Department of Watershed Management's appeals process where it's hard to win a case. The I-Team pored over 18 months of cases appealed by DWM customers. In these situations, when Watershed denied adjustments to disputed bills, customers then went to the Sewer and Water Appeals Board. In our research, they lost 80% of the time.  

"It was a kangaroo court to be honest." That's how Jeff Raw, a frustrated business owner and Atlanta city taxpayer, describes dealing with the Department of Watershed Management's appeals process. 

Raw runs a small, family-owned company called Revive Construction Group that appealed a nearly $30,000 bill. Even when a higher-up in the water company sided with the customer, his decision was overturned.

In an email to DWM, Raw called the appeals board's decision "criminal." 

Let's go back to where this saga began - an empty lot in the city's East Lake community. 

"We bought this land several years ago, and there was no home here," the contractor told the FOX 5 I-Team's Dana Fowle while standing in front of the new, modern construction. "There was no water meter."

Raw has been building and renovating in the City of Atlanta for 20-plus years. He has a routine. 

"I started my process. I ordered the water meter," he said.

Department of Watershed Management employees installed a stand-alone water meter on Oct. 4, 2022. 

"When the meter was installed, there wasn't even a foundation on that house," he said. "So there was nothing for them to connect to."

It was two months before Revive Construction even began to build a home on the land. But before the dirt was even turned over, the water meter was apparently hard at work.  

One month after the water meter was installed, an $8,899 water bill arrived. That's 305,184 gallons of water in a month. According to the EPA, the average family of four only uses 400 gallons. Bills for an empty lot with no connection to the water meter poured in at these numbers for five months, finally coming in at $29,669.43.

The Department of Watershed Management sent someone out to take a look. The utility's notes read, "meter isn't connected to the house." It also said no leak was found.

When the water meter was finally connected in February 2023 to the newly built home's plumbing, the water bills sunk to $13.12. 

Still, Atlanta Watershed Management denied a bill readjustment. Revive Construction exercised its right to appeal the decision.

"We never used water from our meter," he told the board in December 2023. "We used water from our next-door neighbor to rinse tools. And that would've been the only water we would've needed."

Board Chair Clifford Ice said there are only three options: use of water, loss of water, or theft of water.

"There is a period there when nobody is out there, you know, your workers are not out there. Nobody's out there, and an unscrupulous character would know that you're working on the site. You know how people are," he speculated. 

"They seemed to ask a lot of questions about theft, as if they felt I was somehow in the middle of the night connecting to this water, filling up buckets - millions of gallons of water - and taking them somewhere," Raw told the I-Team while standing in the kitchen of the new home. 

This swimming pool pictured here holds about 10,000 gallons of water. It's alleged that he used 1,019,524 gallons. That would be the equivalent of 100 swimming pools.  

Over five months, this would be like someone sneaking onto the property every weekend and stealing 10 swimming pools worth of water. Somebody would certainly have seen that, right? We asked the property's next-door neighbor if he saw anything. He said no. And in fact, he said he didn't see any standing water or soft soil. 

So we went directly across the street to another neighbor: the East Lake Golf Club. If a million gallons of water came anywhere near their manicured greens, it would have set off alarms. The FOX 5 I-Team called them. Did they see anything unusual? No.

"I think that would've been noticed," the experienced builder said.

In a last-ditch effort after nearly a year of negotiating, the contractors appealed to a higher-up at the Department of Watershed Management and begged them to review the board's position.

"It was my Christmas miracle," he said of his short reprieve.

In an email from the utility, it was admitted that the balance was from a water leak caused by the Department of Watershed Management. 

"The prior balance on the account reflected water leakage that was the result of Department of Watershed actions. Once the leak was addressed and the account properly adjusted, the corrected balance for the property is $219.24," the email read.

But that relief was short-lived.

"I get a phone call from the Department of Watershed Management that they have escalated it to someone higher up in the legal department and says we will not honor that," Raw said.

A spokesperson for the utility told the FOX 5 I-Team it was a mistake. The nearly $30,000 bill stands. 

"There should not have been a request to rescind the original amount of $29,603.83. The amount of $219.14 was calculated in error and is not reflective of the oversight that Watershed Management previously conducted," the spokesperson said.

Clearly exhausted and angry from the process, Raw said, "I'm a fairly calm person by nature, but this has gotten me. I feel like it's extortion."

The board left the listener to suspect theft. Yet, there is no proof of this whatsoever. Just speculation.

One board member, Rosanne Maltese, didn't seem happy with the decision to deny the bill readjustment. She even asked a city lawyer if the board could look at "extenuating circumstances that could impact this situation." She was told no. 

In the end, she voted to deny a refund but did it, she said, "very, very sadly."

Revive Construction Group can take the case to Superior Court.