SOMERVILLE, MASS. (WHDH) - Many people in Somerville are getting soaked by big water bills. It turns out it’s because of misread meters – and they say the charges aren’t fair.
Melissa and her sister Debbie were stunned by their water bills soaring into the thousands, a first for the longtime Somerville residents.
“We just wanted an explanation,” Debbie said. “We figured out pretty quickly that something’s wrong.”
Somerville has been replacing water meters since 2022 because its old meters stopped sending data to the city. During the replacement process, the water department had to guess water usage for residents, and sometimes the calculations were off by thousands of dollars.
“Consumers have to know what they’re buying, what they’re paying for,” said Somerville Ward 2 Councilor JT Scott. “It’s straightforward, so to come in and have that kind of catchup bill is, first of all, outrageous and unfair. It’s an insult on top of injury and it’s one that my constituents are mad as hell about.”
7 Investigates discovered that Somerville’s one-time catch-up bills are charging people the 2024 rate for water consumed in previous years. If the city had been accurately recording water usage from the start, residents would have paid significantly less.”
“There are many humane ways to recognize that this is a failure at the city, and while we are all in this together, there are appropriate ways to handle the situation, and what’s happening right now, is simply callous at best, Scott said.
Nearby Newton has the same meter issue, but the city found a way to bill residents for past water use at the rate they would have paid.
“We’re not disputing that we don’t want to pay it. We just want to have it calculated at the correct fiscal year rates,” Debbie said.
Newton ensures each bill is adjusted before it goes out, but Somerville does not.
“We currently don’t have the bandwidth to go in and review all the bills before they go out,” said Demetrius Vidalis, Somerville’s Director of Water and Sewers. “We can’t determine when that was used with any definity, so we have to charge the current rates.”
Somerville residents can try to get their bills adjusted.
“They would have to bring it to our attention,” Vidalis said, otherwise they will be paying 2024 rates.
And if they can’t afford those rates, Somerville is offering a 12-month payment plan option for the one time catch-up bill – but it comes with a whopping 14 percent interest rate.
“We understand that this could cause a hardship for a lot of people,” Vidalis said. “We are definitely putting policies and procedures in place to prevent this from happening at the end of these meters’ life expectancy. We are trying our best to be fair.”
Melissa and Debbie did contact the city and are expected to get a new, adjusted bill in the coming days.
“I’m hoping the city comes to some sort of solution to make all the homeowners satisfied,” Debbie said.
If you believe your bill is unfair or inaccurate, don’t wait. Contact Somerville’s Water Department by email or in person for a recalculation.
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