City of Atlanta has over $120 million in uncollected, overdue water bills
The City of Atlanta has over $120 million in uncollected water and sewer bills, and it has done very little about it.
Channel 2′s Richard Belcher was live at City Hall when the city promised a year ago that it was preparing to crack down on outstanding bills. However, it has not happened yet.
The latest delay came when the city postponed a so-called amnesty program in March. Some people will still struggle to pay if the city gets tough on payments. Although the city knows plenty of people can pay, it just doesn’t bother.
Channel 2 used the state’s open records law to get a massive database of unpaid water and sewer bills from a year ago.
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It turns out that 14,000 customers have unpaid bills of at least $1,000, and nearly a thousand accounts had unpaid bills of $20,000 or more, totaling nearly $130 million.
Howard Shook, chair of the city utilities committee, thinks people should be put on plans.
“People need to be put on plans. We’re not here to throw anyone out in the street, but we’ve got to let people know that water’s not free,” said Shook.
Last December, the City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management told Channel 2 that the city would begin to crack down early in the year. But Shook said he has not seen a change, even a year later.
He also said that the Department of Watershed Management has been inactive and somewhat uncooperative.
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“For the last couple of months now, we’ve been awaiting the promised list of the worst debtors, which always makes an interesting read. Sometimes, it leads to accounts getting cleaned up,” said Shook.
The City Council is hopeful that change will come after the amnesty period.
“Once we get through that amnesty period, we want to assess the impact. Hopefully, positive impact of that period and our customers that are brought into compliance,” said the City Council.
But so far there has been no amnesty and certainly no launch of a major program to cut people off who haven’t paid. The current numbers are as follows:
Single-family accounts owe $87 million.
Commercial accounts owe almost $12 million.
Multi-family accounts owe nearly $25 million.
Altogether, almost $124 million in total are owed.
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