ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — A St. Petersburg woman is calling on the city after she received an unusually high water bill, despite having been displaced during the back-to-back hurricanes.
The city temporarily shut down its drinking water system for less than one day.
Renter Melanie Scheiderman said the water was turned back on after the storms, the extreme pressure caused a leakage at her home. Now she must pay eight times more than what she is typically billed.
Despite being displaced for Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the Scheidermans received a shocking utility bill.
“We got an $1147 bill,” she said.
Melanie and Richard Scheiderman were billed an unusually steep water bill. She said it’s typically around $150, so they thought something must be wrong.
“A typo, an error, somebody read the meter wrong?” Scheiderman questioned.
Scheiderman called the city for some answers, but she said she never received help.
“I said it’s impossible,” she said. “We were gone more than two weeks, and even when I filled up our above-ground pool from the ground up, which uses thousands of gallons, our whole bill was like $500.”
Then she turned to her landlord.
“He came out, and he couldn’t see,” Scheiderman said. “He turned the water off the meter stopped running. He turned the water on, and it started running so he called a leak detection specialist, which found a slow leak in the bathroom.”
Scheiderman said it was caused when the city turned the water back on after the hurricanes.
“It’s likely that it was a slow leak that should’ve been caught if they were properly reading the meters, and if it wasn’t caused by the city’s shut-off and shut-on, then we should’ve seen it,” she said.
The City of St. Pete tells 8 On Your Side:
The drinking water system was down for 12 hours, less than one day. The drinking water system lost pressure for approximately 12 hours overnight October 9-10, 2024. Within nine hours of initial pressure loss, the City began to be slowly restore pressure. It is not possible for the loss of system pressure to have caused the customer’s plumbing to spring a leak. The repressurization of the system was deliberately done slowly so as not to cause a pressure spike (high pressure) that could impact the customer’s plumbing.
The city also encouraged the Scheidermans to call Utility Accounts Customer Service to have the call center staff walk them through their options.
“We are following all the above normal procedures to assist customers who experienced a higher-than-expected utility bill regardless of when it happened, either before, during, or after one of the storms,” a city spokesperson wrote. “ In this case, the customer’s most recent high bill was a result of a meter reading that was taken on 11/19, well after hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton. This indicates to us that they likely have a plumbing issue on their private property that they may be able to address through the leak adjustment process. They should call 727-893-7341, Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm, for assistance.”
“I think it’s a ridiculous amount to place on a homeowner,” Scheiderman said. “I feel like they should’ve been investigating this a long time ago.”
