A North Portland family that received a $17,000 water bill two weeks ago learned Wednesday that a new, adjusted bill will bring their financial responsibility down to a much more manageable $650.
The family that lives in the modest house on North Seneca Street had no idea anything was amiss until they opened a bill from the Portland Water Bureau and learned they owed $17,281.57.
Typically, they owe about $500 per billing period.
The family, according to the outsized bill, had used 627,572 gallons of water between November and February.
An on-site investigation by water bureau crews over the past week led the team to conclude the high usage probably came from a leak in a forgotten pipe that hadn’t been used for years.
Now that the leak has been fixed, the city plans to take the family off the hook, standard water-bureau policy in such cases.
The real mystery is what happened to all that water.
Where did it go? How did it disappear without anyone noticing it was ever there?
No one – not even officials at the water bureau – knows for sure.
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When Talasinga and Lineni Eteaki received the massive bill, they asked their daughter-in-law, Tiana Atiki, for help. From Tonga, the Eteakis don’t speak English and knew they’d have difficulty communicating with the city.
The couple told their daughter-in-law there was no way they could pay the bill, and they were afraid they’d lose their house.
Atiki, 28, called the water bureau, and a customer-service representative told her to look for a leak and prove it had been fixed, and then the city likely would reduce the bill.
Atiki, her in-laws and her husband searched the house, the backyard, the front yard and the basement.
No water.
She pried open the cover to the water box on the parking strip.
No water.
The family hired two different plumbers to see what they could find.
The plumbers also found nothing.
They checked in and around the house, found no leaks and said the water-meter dial was not abnormally spinning, a sure sign of a leak.
After The Oregonian/OregonLive reported on the shockingly high bill, Portland Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who oversees the Water Bureau, asked his team to get to the bottom of it.
On Wednesday, Quisha Light, the Portland Water Bureau’s customer service director, had the answer.
Well, most of the answer.
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Light said that unexpected huge water bills ultimately are always traced to a leak.
“Because a leak is hidden,” she said, “people don’t know about it until the bill comes.”
Light sent out crews to check the water meter, the main line and a new fire hydrant installed a block away to see if that had somehow caused a problem.
“They checked everything,” she said. “There was nothing in the physical infrastructure that was causing a problem.”
But then crews walked along the back of the property – and discovered an exposed water pipe. Atiki, translating for her in-laws, told the crew an old, dilapidated outbuilding had been there until they’d recently demolished it.
For the crew, the huge water bill suddenly made sense.
“We just had a freeze a couple of months ago and this piping probably burst because the pipe was shared with the home,” said Light. “They noticed recent capping had been put on the pipe and the meter reading now was normal.”
So water apparently leaked from that burst pipe after the freeze lifted.
“The water is just going into the ground,” Light surmised. “The water was invisible to the family initially because the snow (on the ground was) melting, and then the rains came.”
She said the family was told to cut the pipe closer to the home and insulate it so it will not be exposed to the elements.
“What my team has done is look at their normal bill they received last year and issued a bill based on that usage,” said Light.
But the mystery, at least at the home on North Seneca, remains.
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When the family moved into the home in 2003, said Tiana Atiki, there was a structure behind the house.
“The roof had caved in, and no one had used it for years,” she said. “It was basically just two walls. At the end of last October, we decided to demolish it.”
When they did so, they cut and capped the pipe to a laundry sink that had been in the outbuilding.
It was that pipe that the water bureau crew believed began leaking in November.
But that answer isn’t entirely satisfying.
More than 600,000 gallons – enough to fill 35 standard-size swimming pools – escaped from the house over three months, even though that’s more than the family typically uses? And it disappeared out of an abandoned, broken pipe behind the house without producing any visible damage?
“It didn’t make sense because there was never water back there,” Atiki said. “It doesn’t explain the amount of water that they’re saying is coming out of it.”
But it’s over.
“I’ll never know,” she said with a sigh. “It is what it is.”
The family hired a plumber to cut the pipe to make it flush with the home. It has been insulated and recapped. Proof of the work will be sent to the water bureau.
The past few weeks, Atiki said, have been stressful, but the experience, strange as it might seem, has been good.
“This has restored my faith in the city,” she said. “Maybe there are some people out there that care.”
And now she waits.
“The magic question is where the water went,” said Atiki. “It’s definitely not in or on our house or property.”
She’s puzzled that it all came down to a leak in a small pipe the family capped off.
“I just hope this really is the problem,” she said. “I guess we’ll know in three months when we get our next bill.”
-- Tom Hallman Jr. is a member of the public safety team. You can reach him at 503 221-8224; thallman@oregonian.com