SAN ANTONIO – It’s been more than half a year since Toni Legrand says she first found herself riding a wave of water bills.
The North Side homeowner said she noticed the fluctuation in her monthly bill from the San Antonio Water System soon after the utility installed a new type of meter in her front yard.
“$30 bills for four or five months until they came and put the meter in,” Legrand said. “I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how you can be up and down.”
Legrand said her usual bills of roughly $30 initially swelled upwards of $100, then went down, then up again to more than ten times the original amount —around $300 — in September.
“Now, here comes the doozer,” she said, holding up a paper bill. “This is my October bill for $379.”
Although she was surprised by the amount, she said she dutifully paid the bill without asking questions.
However, Legrand said she later noticed a whole sea of people in the same boat, other homeowners posting online about similar issues involving new meters and their SAWS bills.
A check of the Nextdoor site showed several threads of comments from people with similar concerns.
One person posted: “Mine is over $250 after removing the old (meter). My normal bill is around $60.”
Another person commented that his bill had tripled, while another posted that the normal bill of around $40 was now between $120-160 per month.
Anne Hayden, communications director for SAWS, said there is no problem with the functioning of the new meters.
“We double check, triple check the meters when they are shipped to us,” she said.
Additionally, she said there is a rigorous quality control process both during the installation process and immediately afterward.
Hayden said SAWS is close to completing its project of replacing more than 600,000 water meters throughout the city with a new digital version.
“Unfortunately, some of those have had meters before that weren’t functioning. They weren’t getting billed for water,” she said.
Hayden said that’s what was happening in Legrand’s case, her old meter wasn’t working properly.
“(Legrand) was only being billed for her sewer service. She hadn’t been billed for water for 18 months,” Hayden said.
While Legrand said she had her home checked for water leaks, Hayden said leaky pipes, fixtures or appliances could be the culprits in other cases where homeowners are seeing high bills.
Hayden said the new meters are designed to detect leaks or unusual usage, then alerts are sent to homeowners. However, she said in order to receive them, customers must keep their contact information updated with SAWS.
Anyone receiving an unexpectedly high bill should contact SAWS as soon as possible, Hayden said. Those homeowners should start by inspecting their water meters, looking for any leaks in that immediate area.
SAWS also has a video on its website showing how to also check those meters for water usage.
If the meter shows water is being used when it shouldn’t be, it could indicate there is a leak somewhere. However, rather than calling in a leak expert, Hayden said homeowners can work with SAWS’ leak detection team.
For more information, click here.
Read also:
Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.