People who live in Pinehurst say they feel like they’re being robbed and tell us the culprit is their MUD district.
They say their water bills have gone up exponentially, and while some are being told it’s because they’re using more water, they say in these cooler months—they’re actually using a lot less.
“I just don’t want to pay it,” resident Randi Garner told KPRC 2′s Deven Clarke.
Let’s face it. Paying bills can be stressful enough, but dozens of people like Garner who live in the Woodtrace neighborhood say they’re now frustrated and confused by recent water bills dished out by Water District Management, MUD #1.
“Most of the water bills in our neighborhood have doubled, tripled, quadrupled or more in the last month,” resident Stephanie Mullin said.
The increases come just in time for the holiday season.
“This is an example of some of the fees that we’re seeing, it’s almost half the price of the bill,” Christi Mendenhall said, pointing to the San Jacinto River Authority fee that she says she doesn’t understand.
Last month, Stephanie and her husband, Steve Mullin’s bill was $69.26. This month, the couple got a bill for $108.56, even though the couple says they weren’t even home most of the time
“They’re saying that I’ve used seven thousand gallons in the last two weeks alone. I was out of town for 3 weeks during this, among other things, the average national house usage is around [six thousand per month], there’s just the two of us. We don’t have a pool, it makes no sense,” Stephanie said.
“My main concern is that this bill, comparatively to last year, we have a fairly similar lifestyle and it’s gone up 11 thousand gallons,” Mendenhall said.
“For the entire year that we’ve lived here, our highest average usage is 20 thousand gallons. All of a sudden in September, it shot up to 42 thousand gallons of water… Our water bill was over $300,” Garner said.
The neighbors say it would be understandable if they were using all this water, but instead they say the deal with continuous pressure losses all the time, and sometimes they don’t have any water at all.
“There’s no warning. We have no advanced notice. We’ll wake up in the morning to get ready for work and there’s just no water. I got to go to work with no shower,” Steve said.
And when they do have water, they say it’s not potable.
“You can literally smell the chlorine in our water when you run it from a tap. Almost everybody has filters on their homes because of it,” Stephanie said.
Neighbors have been flooding the water company with calls but say they’re being hung out to dry.
“They say, ‘No one else is having this issue except for you,’ and we know 100 percent that that’s not correct. So, if nothing else, they’re covering themselves by telling stories if they’re not involved in something more nefarious,” Stephanie said.
We reached out to the San Jacinto River Authority responsible for those extra fees, we also reached put to the water company but so far have not heard back. We plan to keep digging for answers and will keep you posted.
