Reported by: Jamie Holmes
Email: jholmes@wptv.com LAKE WORTH, FL -- Helen Jones wants to know why her water bill has skyrocketed over the past few months. The house next door is having the same problem, even though Jones says the home is vacant and the homeowner died months ago.
Helen Jones won't tell you her age. She's an active senior though, who lives alone. And for someone who says she's rarely home, she has a pretty interesting water bill.
"I'm all by myself," Jones says. "I don't know how they could do this."
Her water bill used to be around $40 a month.
In the last year though, the bill has skyrocketed. In May, it was more than $200. In June, the bill was for $343.
According to her bill, that means this widowed woman is going through roughly 1,000 gallons of water a day. Her May bill indicates she used more than 29,000 gallons of water for the month.
"I did not! No way!" said Jones.
Right next door, in the same Lake Osbourne Estates neighborhood, Edna Bonnell's water bill is the same story.
Her bill reads that the 101-year-old bed-ridden woman was going though four-thousand gallons of water a day, totalling more than 124,000 gallons a month.
That's pretty amazing, says Jones, considering Bonnell's bill kept going up and she continued to get billed, months after she died. Jones says her deceased friend was billed more than $200 a month for three months after her death.
"Yeah," says Jones. "No one lives in the house."
Jones was heir to Bonnell's estate. She paid the bills for both houses on time, so the amounts aren't rolling over month to month.
She also had two plumbers check out both properties, and they didn't find any leaks.
Jones has fought the water company, Aqua Utilities, for months. The national company buys water from Lake Worth Utilities and then sells it back to customers.
We contacted Aqua Utilities media office and gave them details about this story. A media spokesperson told us they would call us back. They did not.
Jones was finally able to get a $1300 dollar refund for Bonnell's estate, but says Aqua Utilities would not give her an explanation for the refund. She's still fighting to get her money back.
"We think they're scamming the widows," she says.
