People in Harrisburg are getting some unwanted surprises in the mail. There are broken water meters in Harrisburg, and now some residents are having to pay high bills for estimated readings. The city had been charging them for estimated readings for months. Only later did the residents receive the higher bills for those readings.
Chris Wise is a Harrisburg landlord who says an average water bill for her tenants is between $60 and $80 a month. So when bills started coming in at $500, $600 and up to $1,000 he thought there had to be a massive water leak at their homes. Instead, the answer from the city was that the batteries in the electronic water meters were dead resulting in having to use estimated usage for the bills.
“ It`s not right for anyone and it`s certainly not right for anyone who has a lower paying job it`s not easy for them to come up with the extra money, “ says Chris Wise, Owner, Wise Property Management
The Harrisburg Authority operates the city’s water system. They say they have setup payment plans for these estimated usage bills, and that they are planning on eventually replacing the broken batteries. However, it will take them some time to replace the thousands of batteries.