Paying for everyone: Resident of Green Tree apartment battling over quadrupled water bills
A Green Tree man reached out to KDKA Investigates for help after months of sky-high water bills.
Those bills quadrupled from one hundred to nearly 400 dollars.
Michael Martorella tells KDKA Consumer Investigator Meghan Schiller he moved into Green Tree's Carriage Park Apartment two years ago and says recently the company Riverwind bought part of the plan. That's when he says his bills skyrocketed.
"All of a sudden for two people we used 13,000 gallons of water and I'm like how is that possible?" asked Martorella.
He lives with his roommate and two dogs and says the water bills kept climbing and just didn't make sense.
"19,500 gallons of water, that's like 2 swimming pools of water that we used for 2 people and you know we are basically paying now another $450 in water bills which is like another car payment."
To put that 19,500 number in context, according to most estimates, a typical family of two uses around 138 gallons of water per day, or just north of 4 thousand galloons in a 30-day month.
Martorella even called "Studebaker Submetering," the name listed on his bills.
"I said can you please explain to me what happened, he said oh yeah, this is billed for the 8 units here and then what they do is divide up from the number of heads that live in the townhouses."
Studebaker's website says it uses "automated meter reading technology" and collects all of the data through "ethernet and cloud-based technology in order to generate bills to the residents."
KDKA Investigates reached out to Riverwind to ask if they suspect an error or a leak in Martorella's apartment. They didn't respond by news time. Martorella tells me the apartment complex maintenance workers checked for leaks but found nothing. Next, he received an email saying the apartment building compared his water bills with an identical building's water usage and decided to issue him the difference as a credit on his account.
The email read, in part, "We understand that this is not a long-term solution and want to ensure you that the bills have been accurate based on the physical bills provided by PA American Water."
Martorella wants his search for answers to serve as a warning to all renters to pay attention to these things.
"You can't make it make sense and if somebody were to actually sit me down and show me what you're doing on paper I'll pay it gladly."
He tells KDKA that with no resolution or explanation yet, he's planning to move out of the apartment complex this spring.
Other than a big leak, or faulty meter, the next possible cause is a billing error. We're waiting to hear back from Studebaker Submetering out of Alexandria, Virginia to see if they could conduct what's called a "meter re-read."
