CARMEL, Calif. -- California American Water is dealing with additional complaints of large water bills on the Monterey Peninsula. After being away for two weeks in July, Mary Sanders was welcomed home with a $1,492 bill.
"There's no explanation for that kind of water use," said Sanders.
Sanders keeps track of every bill she pays and said every month is pretty consistent up until July. But that month no one was no home for 2 weeks.
"There was no washer machine being used, no dishwasher being used, no showers being taken," said Sanders.
But according to her bill, Mary used 36,225 gallons of water.
And for Mary, that's more disturbing than the amount she was billed. "That would be an outrageous high amount of excess water use," said Sanders.
To put it into perspective, Mary's pool holds about 35,000 gallons of water. Sanders says to fill it up, "It took four days running the hose full blast 24/7 to get that amount of water back into the pool. Its a huge amount of water!"
Mary isn't the first Cal-Am customer we've told you about that's been hit with an unusually high water bills. Cal-Am said there has to be a reason behind each spike -- and says usually there is some sort of leak or excess use somewhere. The company cannot comment on specific cases but tells Central Coast News it's meters are reliable and they have not found one meter that has been defective.
Mary even had Cal-Am come to her house and told her there was no leak.
Her August bill arrived for only $169 even with her family home the whole month.
