$3,731 bill begs question: Where did all the water go?

WILMINGTON, Del. — Wilson Coale has a $3,731 question: Where did the 428,120 gallons of water go that he was billed for using between June and September at his home near Millsboro?

There was no sign of a leak inside and no indication of a gusher from the pipes outside the home in Riverdale.

Truth be told, Coale said, he did notice a "drip, drip, drip" in his bathroom right before he and his wife headed south to Florida, so they shut the water off.

There was a slight increase in his normal bill during the previous billing quarter, but he thought he had resolved it when a relative came over, pulled up a section of the downstairs bathroom floor and replaced a leaking bathroom feed pipe.

Coale thought everything was fine.

Then he received his most recent bill for $3,731.

It was for more water than most residential customers use in seven years. According to a recent report by the Water Resources Agency at the University of Delaware, a typical residential customer uses 15,000 gallons of water every quarter or 60,000 gallons a year.

Coale said a friend told him that 428,120 gallons would have been enough to fill a dozen backyard swimming pools.

"It would have had to flooded out my bathroom," he said.

Peter A. Rolleri, customer services director for Middlesex Water Co., the parent company of Tidewater Utilities, which serves the Riverdale area, said it's not uncommon for residential customers to see spikes in their bills because of leaks.

"I don't know where the water went," he said.

Coale maintains he has checked, and there is no leak in his house.

Rolleri said the company made a customer courtesy leak adjustment and credited Coale's account by $876.20 on Nov. 13. Then Coale made a $300 payment and is on a payment plan of $150 a month with a remaining balance of $2,575.99.

Rolleri said there's no way on the utility's end to know for sure if the leak is fixed until the next billing cycle, which will be next month.

The Public Service Commission, which regulates water utility rates in the state, typically tries to work with customers and utilities to come up with a reasonable payment plan, said Heather Contant, a spokeswoman for the commission.

But in the end, water that is used must be paid for or "someone else is going to have to eat up that cost," Contant said.

At the Delaware Rural Water Association, water leaks are something to be found and fixed immediately, said Rick Duncan, executive director of the organization. The reason: It's expensive to pump, add chemicals to and distribute water to homes and businesses. When there's a leak, it's literally money down the drain.

"That's a valuable resource," Duncan said. "It's a costly resource."

Duncan said not all leaks are obvious, especially when they are in the water feed line outside his house.

Duncan said with the volume of water that was used over three months at the Coale home, the people in the house would have heard the water leaking if it was inside the house. They might have even seen it.

If the leak was outside, that's another matter, he said. With the sandy soils around Oak Orchard and Riverdale, the water could have quickly soaked through the ground, back to the groundwater.