Atlanta woman receives outrageous water bill, she's not the only one

ATLANTA - When your water bill is usually around $13 a month, and then it spikes to $20,000 the next month, that will grab your attention—and, of course, your wallet.

A FOX 5 viewer's bill eventually reached more than $81,000, so we decided to go door to door to see what the property's neighbors were experiencing. We discovered that in the Department of Watershed Management's own records, high water usage alerts were triggered for three miles along that same road around the same time.

Gail Mapp inherited a building along a very busy stretch of Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway when her mother passed away. Without question, she kept paying the water bill because it was only $13.12. But the old ceramics shop sat locked up and unused.

In December 2022, the Department of Watershed Management changed the meter's register—the device that measures water usage—because it was no longer transmitting usage information. The next month, the water bill for this unused address took a geyser-sized leap.

"I saw $16,000," said Gail Mapp when she opened that water bill.

That was January 2023. In February, it kept climbing up to $17,477. The next month, another $17,000-plus. In April, it exceeded $20,230. By the end, the tally came to more than $81,000.

It didn't make sense to Gail Mapp.

"Be very careful," she warned as we unlocked the door and walked into a crumbling space with a collapsed roof. It's uninhabitable.

It's been this way, she said, for more than a decade. After the fourth bizarre water bill, she had her first plumber come out.

"They said there is no water, no working plumbing in the building. There is no water coming from the meter to the building," she explained, standing by a large opening in the rooftop.

That same month, April 2023, an Atlanta Watershed Management technician came out. His notes show "No leak found" on the city's side of the meter.

And mind you, neither the city nor the plumber reported seeing any signs of standing water, running water—any water—which is astounding because DWM billing shows this address used almost 700,000 gallons of water in one month. Every day, this "leak on paper" was supposed to be producing the equivalent of two large swimming pools of water. Yet, two experts didn't report seeing a drop.

Gail Mapp asked the water department to clear her more than $81,082 bill.

She said, "We got denied for the adjustment."

She appealed. City representative Daniel McCrary said this on March 26, 2024, at her City of Atlanta Water and Sewer Appeals Hearing:

"I would like to put on the record, just because there is no plumbing in the building doesn't mean there can't be a leak that can occur."

But one of Gail Mapp's three plumbers who came out specialized in finding underground leaks.

"He showed me on his meter that when you turn that on, enough water fills the line, then it stops. And so, no water is coming in here."

She told the hearing panel and the Fox 5 I-Team that when the city's meter was turned on, only a gallon would flow from the city meter to the line that went nowhere.

Without any intervention, she told the appeals board that her water bills were suddenly going down—$4,127, $631, to $194.

By late summer 2023, DWM's own notes show the meter reading register was broken again. The water department replaced it. Again. And guess what?

"By September, it was back to $13.12," she said.

The Department of Watershed Management did eventually return more than $5,000 to the account, citing "billing errors," but that still leaves a $76,000 tab.

We wondered if the Mapps were alone in experiencing abnormally high water bills. The Fox 5 I-Team found in city records that DWM's own internal system alerted them to unusually high water usage along the same commercial district of Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway around the same time as the Mapp's high bills.

We have asked the Department of Watershed Management if this is a coincidence or a connection. We have yet to hear back. Until then, Gail Mapp is taking them to court.

"I am having to retain an attorney, go to court, and not talk about how much time this has taken from my life—doing this research and fighting them."