Richmond Hill resident shocked by $8,200 water bill
Probe underway to determine cause of billing for 27,000 litres per day

YorkRegion.ca
June 10, 2014
By  Kim Zarzour

Was it a ghost guzzler, or a phantom faucet?

A Richmond Hill resident has asked council to help him solve a mysterious water bill that charged him more than 32 times his normal rate this winter.

Igor Sapojnikov told council last night that he was shocked to receive an invoice from the town billing him for 27,000 litres of water a day from December until February.

It was, he said, “physically impossible” for his family of five to use that much water in a 3,400 square-foot home.

Sapojnikov said the town informed him of the jump in his bill – from $250 to $8,200, reflecting an increase from 1,000 litres a day to 27,000 litres a day – at the end of March.

He immediately contacted a plumber. After inspecting the home on Silver Linden Drive, where he has lived for 12 years, the plumber found no leaks inside or out, he said.

Sapojnikov said he does not have a pool and lives on a 45 by 110-foot lot.

The family consulted an engineer and was told it was impossible to leak almost three million litres of water in three months, that “the entire street would most likely be flooded.”

Sapojnikov works at Richmond Hill Toyota with 70 employees, where 100 vehicles are washed with an automatic car wash every day, and he said the water bill there averages $780 a month.

When he complained to the town about the fee, he said he was offered a no-interest payment plan.

The homeowner has since switched his water meter from analogue to digital readout and his bills “went back to normal”.

Town staff told council the home’s water meter was tested and found to be working, but further testing is underway. Council was told there have been other instances in the past where problems with unusually high water use occurring with water filtration systems constantly running.

Ward 2 Councillor Carmine Perrelli said his research shows it’s possible to use 24,000 litres a day “if you leave a one-inch garden house running around the clock ... One would have to assume that this family took a hose, turned it on, let the water go down the drain and for some reason let this hose run 24 hours a day for three months. I can’t see that happening”.

He suggested the town forgive the extra fee and bill the owner his average rate without penalty or interest because “there really isn’t anything staff could tell us to sway us one way or the other. There’s no point wasting staff’s time.”

But Ward 3 Councillor Castro Liu said other residents have had similar “mystery bills” and an explanation was found.

In one case, a resident was billed for 30,000 litres a day after leaving backyard taps on throughout the winter. Another had a defective water softener, and a third resident discovered a defect on the meter reader and was subsequently reimbursed.

Regional Councillor Vito Spatafora, who along Ward 6 councillor Godwin Chan has been working with the Silver Linden homeowner to solve the mystery, noted that if the town forgave the excessive fee and it was found to be a correct meter reading, taxpayers would end up footing the bill.

Council has asked for a staff report due back at the next meeting June 23.