While this year\u2019s heat waves drove up electricity use for countless Southern California families, an elderly Los Angeles couple received a shocking utility bill for their water: more than $9,200.<\/p>\n
The bill that Joyce Howell, a retired nurse, and her Vietnam War veteran husband received from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) left the couple in their 80s struggling to understand how they could owe so much.<\/p>\n
When they began noticing an increase in their bill, they reached out to the utility with help from their daughters to find out what was happening.<\/p>\n
A representative eventually told the family that the couple\u2019s water meter had been broken for three years, according to Howell\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to have to pay the bill,\u201d the LADWP representative told the couple, the daughter said.<\/p>\n
According to documents shared with NBC Los Angeles, the LADWP said Howell had not been charged for water between February 2023 and March 2026. Despite the billing gap resulting from the broken meter, the utility said the couple was still responsible for paying for the water they had used.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean to tell me that we have to go back three years and pay that bill?\u201d the couple\u2019s daughter said. \u201cThey should have read the meter, and they should have had whoever the technician to come out on a monthly basis or whatever to see if the meter is being read or if it was broken or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple now live on a fixed income, and their children are worried about how their parents will manage the unexpected expense.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are coming at my parents that have dedicated their lives as family, people, decent community, good parents, and give them back to community, and then you come with them with this bill at the end of their lives,\u201d the daughter said.<\/p>\n
An LADWP official told NBCLA that the utility operates about 700,000 water meters and 1.7 million electric meters, and that meters can sometimes get stuck.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, it is unfortunate,\u201d Joseph Ramallo of LADWP said. \u201cHowever, we have a responsibility to all the rest of our customers because we\u2019re only funded by our customer rates and charges to collect a reasonable amount of time going back because that water was used and not paid for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ramallo said the water meter had actually been broken for longer than three years. The home, which measures about 3,100 square feet, typically receives a monthly water bill of a little more than $300.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf water is used, we have a responsibility to charge for it. And then to work with them under terms they can afford, looking backwards for up to three year,\u201d the LADWP official said.<\/p>\n
The utility said it offered the family a long-term payment plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no problem paying the bill, but if it was not working, somebody should have done something,\u201d Howell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While this year\u2019s heat waves drove up electricity use for countless Southern California families, an elderly Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,29545,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-489916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-ladwp","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}