Hundreds of Opelousas residents are illegally using city water lines, mayor claims

Opelousas Mayor Julius Alsandor recently discovered an apparently illegal municipal household practice that he estimates is costing the city vital infrastructure revenues.

Alsandor told the Board of Aldermen Tuesday night that a large number of Opelousas residents have obviously been eluding household monthly water bill payments by illicitly tapping into larger water lines that are submerged under roadways and monitored by the city.

“We have people in the city who have been taking water when they shouldn’t. This has resulted in a large amount of lost revenue for (Opelousas) for countless years. We have got to fix that,” Alsandor said during a discussion of 11 ongoing citywide road reconstruction projects.

Alsandor didn’t provide an estimate of the amount of money that the municipal water department has lost due to people whom Alsandor said have been connecting unmetered water lines on their property to evade paying for services that are normally billed monthly to residences supplied by the city.

“I know that there are hundreds of residences that are tying into these water lines illegally. I knew that the problem existed. I just didn’t know that it existed to that extent,” Alsandor told the Board.

Alsandor did not indicate whether he plans to suggest fines for households or disconnect customers suspected of obtaining city water illegally.

City engineer William Jarrell III told the Board that he notified Alsandor of the illegal water line issue recently when he was inspecting one road resurfacing project on North Market Street.

More budget problems: Gas costs are forcing St. Landry Parish to delay work on rural roads

Jarrell said that in the process of performing the resurfacing work, the road contractor began encountering a number of water lines as the road crews were pulverizing the surface down to a 12-inch base.

“Those water lines are pretty shallow underneath the surface of the road and some of them were in bad shape. We did some work on the lines, putting in new materials and service lines. I know that this will give the residents better water pressure. Changing out the lines was something that we eventually knew would have to be done,” Jarrell said.

However as Jarrell began performing a more detailed examination into the number of water lines being fed by one city service line, he detected something suspicious.

“What we were seeing is that there were multiple houses along Market Street that were being serviced by one three-quarter-inch line. This was something that until then was unknown,” Jarrell added.

Voters say no to taxes: Should St. Landry School Board try again on property taxes that voters rejected in March?

Jarrell said the problem has been solved by installing an individual service line for each home that will be supplied by a main line, similar to the method the city uses for residences that are connected to the municipal water system.

“What this did was increase the water pressure for each individual home. It’s going to be a big improvement for those residents now,” Jarrell said.

When asked by some Board members about why there were so many lines previously running from houses, Jarrell said the answer was obvious.

“They wanted to avoid paying for water,” Jarrell said.

City officials have said they hope to obtain a better monitoring of municipal water and utilities usage after the completion of a $2 million project that features new water meters and a computerized gauging of monthly water consumption from each customer.

This article originally appeared on Opelousas Daily World: Opelousas is losing money due to illegal waterlines, mayor claims