this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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Kind of fascinating that they don't do any kind of reconciliation of water delivered against water billed. You'd think that would be an easy thing to do and a good way to discover leaks (or theft). I mean, there would definitely be 'missing' water due to leaks, fire department, etc, but one imagines that would have some kind of normal/tolerable range, and that 30 million missing gallons would trigger some kind of investigation prior to customer complaints.
It sounds like they hooked up their own water connection so the water utility didn't even know they were using the water. They can only measure usage by checking the meter attached to your hookup. I don't think its possible to measure the entire 'input' of water versus total usage like you're suggesting.
Water company can measure the water that leaves their pumping station(s) - just put a flow meter on the one big pipe. If that doesn't match the sum of all their customer meters, then water is going somewhere else - broken pipe, illegal connection, meter fraud, whatever.
I would guess that most jurisdictions already have that one big flow meter, because they have to comply with water rights agreements, have to know how much chlorine & fluoride to inject, etc.
That's probably exactly what they did, but usually the water meter at customers is only measured or reported on once per year, so it takes months before the difference becomes clear in the data.
Maybe they do commercial customers different, but I'm about 30 miles north of the site in question, and my water use is reported in real time. I can even get a daily report from their web site. It's hard to believe they'd be less interested in the usage of their 1e6-gallon-per-year commercial customers than their 1e4-gallon-per-year residential customers.
Depends on the age of the system. Newer meters can be read remotely.
Same difference though. These people didn't have a meter at all because the water utility didn't connect them to the water grid. It'd be similar to someone running their own line to the nearest power pole.
a case of 'boss goto jail', hopefully!
I'm sure it'll be labeled "a mistake" and nobody will face any consequences other than the residents who don't have any drinking water.
If they tapped into the water supply without the water company's knowledge then they have a clear path to legal action. The fact that doesn't seem to be a factor makes me think this was an oversight the water company doesn't want to acknowledge. Just a hunch.