ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — There's outrage in St. Petersburg for one woman who says her last two water bills totaled nearly $3,000.
Now, Patty Strader is worried the city won't budge after she says she proved there's no way her one-bathroom home in Disston Heights could've leaked that much water.
“This bill is $2,099.85,” she says while showing 10 Tampa Bay her latest bill. “Usage of 64,800 gallons of water. It’s just crazy to me that it's on us to prove something when this is what their business is."
When she got the bill she immediately got to work to prove she didn't use that much water, hiring two plumbers and a leak detection company, who all said there was no leak.
“This is crazy,” she says. “I mean, 64,000—almost 65,000 gallons of water.”
To put that into perspective, a large family swimming pool can hold about 30,000 gallons of water.
The city says somehow Strader used enough water to fill more than two of these swimming pools in a month. According to the EPA, a typical water leak could fill one pool, but it would take a year.
And it's not an uncommon headache for people in St. Pete, with many responding with similar stories on Strader’s post on NextDoor. Five years ago we profiled an 80-year-old veteran who got a similar bill at nearly three thousand dollars.
“Sticker shock,” Alzono Hill said at the time. "I'm retired I can't afford giving my money away."
The city says its water meter works fine and Strader has options now that she's hired professionals who said there wasn't a leak that could've caused that high of a bill. The city claims a leaky flapper valve in a toilet might be to blame but while she replaced the valve, none of the pros she hired said that would’ve caused such large consumption.
She's applied to go before the Utility Billing Review Committee to make her case and is hoping for a major reduction.
In St. Petersburg, a customer has up to eight steps to take before applying for a bill review.
The committee meets every other month and makes recommendations that ultimately go to the mayor for approval.
“I'll be educating myself in the future because people shouldn't hold those positions if you're going to do this to the people in the city that you represent,” she says.