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I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following : Political Advertisement Paid for and Approved by Jeff Bergosh, Republican, for Escambia County Commissioner District 1








Friday, November 18, 2022

The Mystery of the More Than $7,000.00 1-Month ECUA Water Bill?!?



Just imagine it.  You go online to pay your routine bills, to include your ECUA bill for water, sewage and garbage.  Ho hum, just something you do once a month.

But when you log in to pay your bill, you spit coffee through your nostrils and adrenaline pumps through your body and your blood pressure skyrockets  as you see something that CANNOT be right---a bill that is normally around a hundred bucks is $7,326.00 dollars!

What!?!     (picture the Allstate Commercial where the guy on your door cam starts smashing your car window and you aren't there to stop him from doing it)

What?!?  Seven Grand!!!

Making matters worse--you quickly realize this isn't a "mistake."

Uh oh, spagetthi o's--or as Scooby Doo might say "Ruh-Roh Raggy!!"

In this instance of a true story that unfolded yesterday afternoon/evening--------the bill was, in fact,  correct.  Apparently--the culprit was a water leak on the property-owner's side of the meter that was not noticed by anyone. (not sure how, but that's a question for another time I guess--once folks calm down and come back from the ledge) 

So what do you do?  Well,  you --the property owner---quickly contact your county commissioner--- (who has no play in this at all-- by the way--but whatever:  I am here to help!)----who quickly forwards the issue to his ECUA counterpart--and lo and behold there is an explanation.  And, thankfully, a solution.

In this story--the quick actions of ECUA staff and board member Vicki Campbell are to be commended.  ECUA immediately went out to the property, checked the situation, and determined a leak was the culprit.  No word back yet on what caused it or whether or not it has been repaired by the property owner (hopefully it has been!--but it must've been leaking a while to run up that kind of a billing--how did the property owner not notice this?).

Thankfully--there is now a happy ending to this story coming.....

Because ECUA offers its customers a one time credit for such catostrophic occurrences.  (I know this firsthand because I had a similar situation occur and was able to wipe away the charges with this one-time facility provided by ECUA.)

Thankfully (and mercifully)--this is a bill that this homeowner won't have to pay.

Whew--that's a relief!


8 comments:

Tom Jardine said...

It’s true that the ECUA offers one-time forgiveness for the water bill associated with a leak. And that’s terrific.

However, if the family has lived at that residence for twenty or thirty years, they may well have already received their one-time exemption in the past. In that case, the citizen is on the hook for that $7,000 bill.

It would be great if the ECUA would renew that forgiveness every ten years. I wonder if the ECUA could absorb that cost.

I have a very positive perspective on the ECUA.

However, I would like them to get moving on their wastewater mitigation project on Pensacola Beach.

The ECUA WWTP on Pensacola Beach is currently discharging one million gallons of treated wastewater directly into the Santa Rosa Sound each day. And their mitigation project has been languishing for ten years.

My understanding is that the only phase of that mitigation project that has been completed in the past ten years is a holding tank that was completed in early 2018.

I believe that the ECUA has been awarded $4.5 million dollars from the BP oil spill money to perform their mitigation project.

Logically, the longer this project drags on, the more problems they will encounter.

The state of Florida has mandated that we stop discharging our effluent into the waterway no later than January 2032.

However, we market ourselves as an environmentally conscious, safe, world-class family vacation destination while we continue to drag our feet on our wastewater mitigation.

While not progressing with our mitigation project, our county commissioners have simultaneously approved Innisfree Hotels three new massive private towers on Pensacola Beach, each with a 67% increase in hotel rooms.

The commissioners have authorized Innisfree to construct one new twelve story private tower with a combination of condominium units and hotel rooms, directly on Casino Beach at 2 Via de Luna immediately east of Crabs.

The commissioners have authorized Portofino to begin development on new private towers #6 and #7.

And the commissioners are hardly reinvesting a dime of our annual revenue of $21.8 million dollars in tourist development taxes back towards Pensacola Beach (where most of that $21.8 million was generated).

Instead the commissioners are allocating the majority of that $21.8 million to advertising in order to attract record numbers of tourists to Pensacola Beach, resulting in ever-increasing levels of wastewater discharge directly into our beautiful Santa Rosa Sound.

By not progressing with our wastewater mitigation, as we simultaneously continue to add wastewater discharge, we are jeopardizing the FDEP permit that we must reapply for every five years to continue to discharge into the Sound.

Jeff, you and your fellow commissioners are underfunding and mismanaging Pensacola Beach.

And you, Commissioner Bergosh, have enjoyed a seat on the tourist development council throughout 2022.

What the heck have you been doing??

Alice Hurst Neal said...

What weird timing. I just posted on ECW yesterday morning about my water bill being considerably higher than usual. Come to find out, a LOT of individuals with ECUA are seeing the same thing right now. I'm currently in the process of trying to find out what happened at my house to cause this and to make sure it never happens again.

Anonymous said...

Vicki Haines Campbell knows full well that the spinners on their meters can go kerflooey, and it's a nationwide problem. They pretend it's a massive water leak and never mention the problem with the spinners to their customers. I have spoken to the BCC about the problem twice over the years, and addressed ECUA about it directly. Steven Barry has spoken about his knowledge of the problem. People's has the same issue. This is an industry wide problem that ECUA and People's pretends they don't know about. In the past, People's made people sign something about a one-time forgiveness on the bill and acknowledging it was customer caused. Please note the date on this email.
------------------------
People's Water, Spiking Bills, Malfunctioning "Spinners"
1 message
Melissa Pino Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 7:52 AM
To: Lisa Nellessen-Lara PNJ
Cc: "melissawpino@gmail.com"
Dear Ms. Nellessen-Lara,

This email is a follow-up to a voicemail I left you concerning random spikes in People's Water meter readings, and the plan of Navy Point residents to address the BCC during the public forum at the next meeting (the 16th).

As I mentioned in my voicemail, the BCC has already publicly discussed the need for an official investigation into this. I don't know where that stands, in an official capacity.

I thought you might be interested in some news media reports from other locales across the country. They were practically rioting in the streets about this in a suburb of Atlanta.

It's not an exaggeration to say that this is potentially a huge story. When it comes down to it, what is happening is out-and-out theft, with People's offering no recourse and pretty much telling its customers to pound sand. I highly doubt that they are not aware of this nation-wide spinner problem. There are multiple companies whose devices have been deemed faulty; not insignificantly, it seems that one of them had a huge drop in stock after they reported these problems at their last stockholder meeting.

Please feel free to be in touch with me via email or phone if you would like to hear a bit more about what is happening with the billing. That's an old Boston cell number, but I live on Navy Point.

Links below my signature.

Best wishes,

Melissa Pino
617.990.7404
--------------------------------------------
"Suburb's smart water meters regularly overcharge residents"

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-water-meter-overcharge-met-20150603-story.html

------------------------------------------

Independent study of meters showing that the meters fail in a broad field testing study:

http://www.waterrf.org/ExecutiveSummaryLibrary/4028_ProjectSummary.pdf

-------------------------------------------

Atlanta area TV news:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16gI4pCeQxw&autoplay=1&app=desktop

-------------------------------------------

blogpost from Albany (I believe) area:

http://blog.timesunion.com/advocate/homeowner-gets-soaked-by-faulty-water-meter/2885/

Melissa Pino said...

Oh and ps, IF this is one of those situations where the homeowner has had a plumber out, the plumber has insisted there is no leak, but ECUA and People's insists it was a multi thousand dollar leak, the leaks always magically resolve themselves by the next bill.

Again, I don't know if that is what happened in this particular situation. But with a 7000 bill? Very likely. The slightest deviation from proper installation of the meters can trigger this issue. One of those links in the email I posted is of an engineer sitting at his desk with a spinner registering massive flow of water not even hooked up to a pipe.

Melissa Pino said...

Just noticed your comment, Alice. I gave you a friendly heads about this on Sept 30th 2021, which was the last time of many this subject has made the rounds on social media.

Unfortunately Mr. Ericson is dead wrong bout meters not being able to run faster; he must not be familiar with their new mechanisms, which aren't even all that new any more...they've been causing problems for years now.

Seems strange that such a high number of these events is happening right now, but the spinner problem does tend to come in waves and sometimes through particular locales. The things can be so erratic that a lot can set them off on their freak outs.

Vicki Campbell was at the board meeting the day I addressed ECUA about this, and the Board expressed shock and concern that day, but I've still never heard anything about an ECUA rep acknowledging it's an issue out in the field. Clark Partington was there representing a client that day, and I was able to provide the information to their attorney so they could pursue the possibility. Lots of people locally know about this problem, and yet somehow the information never seems to battle through to the population. Perhaps because the water companies do such a good job of pretending it doesn't exist. The point being that it's the same problem as the last how many times this subject has arisen on ECW, Nextdoor, etc with the same people contributing wrong info and lecturing people to keep looking for leaks they don't have each time.

Anonymous said...

Yes one can have a faulty meter. They should be calibrated and checked for accuracy, they can have a billing person who makes a mistake, and of course their can be a leak. It is good you got them relief Commissioner Bergosh, even though technically it is not in your wheelhouse.

I'm sure they would rather blame it on a leak than on their failure to do maintenance or check the precision and accuracy of meter or admit a meter reader or billing clerk screwed up. Such is life in the CYA world.

Kevin Wade said...

Uhm... quick math on an average 12'w x 32'lenght x 6' deep average inground family pool put this at roughly with taxes and no allowance for anything but the $2.80 per 1k gallons at a leak that would fill that pool 150 times or in an average month refilling that average pool 5x a day 7 days a week....

or a tower of water that is 12'w x32'l x 900'tall or a little more than 3x the height of the Seville Tower downtown.

How in this green earth can a utility push a bill like this without a knock at the door and a very serious check to shore up vital infrastructure that would already be washed down into Perdido Bay?

Another math perspective on this is the volume per minute to reach this astronomical price is roughly calculated at 59.032174 gallons per minute. Lol, there are very few Escambia homes that could handle 5 2 gallon toilets being flushed simultaneously without some 'issues'.

But this would make for a very long family pool party if adult beverage by volume of solo cups at 21,600,000 for celebration.

And from the Census we can estimate the solo cup party people vs refills at just less than a complete pour with this July figures...

"What is Florida's current population 2022?
22 million residents -
The estimates released by the state Demographic Estimating Conference showed that Florida's population growth appears to have peaked last year with a 1.6% growth rate. Florida's population in 2022 will stand at more than 22 million residents, trailing only California and Texas in size. July 27, 2022"

Melissa Pino said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Thank you Kevin. It's like, good Lord, how many times do we have to lay this out in public and social media forums for people to still be coming on with "HOW CAN THIS POSSIBLY BE HAPPENING?"

And that calculation on the solo cups is invaluable.

For anyone still confused, please refer to this educational video, which offers a concise, on point recommendation about the outcome of impact:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CehYA3omb5o

Political Advertisement Paid For and Approved by Jeff Bergosh, Republican for Escambia Commission D1