City Council members are demanding answers after Atlanta’s first water audit in three years found customers owe more than $236 million in unpaid bills.
Even more surprising is the list of prominent customers with delinquent accounts. Among them were Chick-fil-A, Ponce City Market, Fulton County, Atlanta Public Schools, a massive data center company and even the federal government, city leaders learned from the audit this week.
Officials with the Ponce City Market developer said their delinquency was a mix-up, and the nearly $200,000 balance has since been paid. Chick-fil-A did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The report found that as of April, nearly a quarter of Atlanta’s active water customers — more than 60,000 accounts — were behind on payments. The $236 million in unpaid water bills is up from $198 million in 2023, city auditors told the council.
Now some council members are calling on the Department of Watershed Management to start cutting off service and demanding payment.
Dustin Hillis, who chairs the council’s utilities committee, was visibly outraged by the audit results.
“I don’t know where to start,” he told Watershed Commissioner Greg Eyerly. “Twenty-five percent of your accounts are in past due status, and there are 41,000 active accounts in arrears, yet last quarter you only cut off 345 meters.”
Fulton County, which is currently seeking to buy the city’s detention center, owes Atlanta $4.7 million for water alone, Hillis said.
“This is wild. Go try to do that with Georgia Power,” the council member said. “See how long your power stays on.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Senior Performance Auditor Erwin Coleman said accounts that haven’t paid up in 90 days are generally deemed “uncollectible.” When inactive accounts cannot be collected, typically after a year, those balances are written off, he said.
“Watershed management must rely on payments from non-delinquent customers to cover the cost of operations and services provided to delinquent account holders,” Coleman said, suggesting the department may need to “strengthen its collection efforts” to reduce its reliance on account write-offs.
The previous audit found the department terminated just 737 accounts for non-payment in the 12 years between 2010 and 2022. Since then, the delinquent balance has grown 19%, despite nearly $62 million in write-offs.
From July 2023 until March of this year, the city cut off water to more than 5,300 customers. That included 5,188 homes and 175 businesses, the audit found.
Attempts to allow past due customers to catch up over time don’t always pan out. More than half of the nearly 3,000 customers offered payment plans over the past three years ended up breaking those agreements.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Eyerly told Council he was hearing some of those figures for the first time.
He also said a review by his department showed customers owed about $184 million, significantly less than the $236 million delinquent account figure presented by the city auditor’s office.
As for the cutoffs, Eyerly said his department tries to issue 60 “yellow tags” per week, giving customers one final notice they’re behind on their bills.
“However, our goal is not to shut off 60 accounts,” he said. “If you pay 25% of your account, we do not shut you off.”
Eyerly said the $62 million in write-offs was an accurate figure, and his department is seeking to write off even more “uncollectible debt” in the near future.
He estimated about $150 million in past due water bills would not be recouped.
“I think it is self-evident that the city does need to improve its collection efforts and be more disciplined in water shutoffs,” he said, noting that for years the city had a policy he described as “very lenient.”
Other council members seemed flummoxed by the list of seemingly wealthy businesses identified in the audit with outstanding balances.
One Chick-fil-A location, identified only by store number, owes nearly $500,000, according to the audit. And bustling Ponce City Market owed nearly $200,000 in past due water bills, the audit says, while APS has a $137,000 balance.
A spokesperson for Jamestown, the developer behind Ponce City, attributed the delinquent water bills to a mix-up and said the group is now current on its accounts.
“We can confirm that during development of a parcel at Ponce City Market, we assigned an incorrect address while setting up the parcel’s water account, and the account was never transferred into our City of Atlanta billing portal,” Jamestown said in a statement. “Together, these two issues caused bills to be misdirected, and kept the delinquency from showing on our account.”
Jamestown said it has since made the necessary corrections, and that “all accounts are now current and paid in full.”
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
A spokesperson for Fulton County said they have been in discussions with the city about the status of the water accounts.
“Fulton County has requested documentation from the city to support their claims of past due accounts going back decades,” county spokesperson Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said. The requested documentation will allow Fulton County to determine what, if anything, is actually owed.”
The list of delinquent customers also includes hotels, apartment complexes, townhome communities, a data center and the U.S. Postal Service.
“It would be a lot more collectible if you actually started cutting people’s water off,” Hillis told Eyerly. “’Cause if I can’t have water I’m calling to pay y’all right now.”
Hillis said he doubted any of the well-known businesses or large residential developments on the list were “dying for money.”
Council member Liliana Bakhtiari called the findings “incredibly disappointing,” calling out Chick-fil-A and Ponce City Market by name.
“The people that are creating the most debt are those commercial entities and our alleged partners,” she said. “I’m just so angry. We’re a world-class city, and these issues just shouldn’t be happening.”
Hillis called Watershed’s woes “one of the worst financial situations” he’s seen since joining council. He also said he will start requiring biweekly updates on the status of the city’s unpaid accounts.
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