Earlier this week, the city of Cape Town “named and shamed” the biggest consumers of water in the greater Cape Town area.

But as those who went on a Google Street View walk discovered, the logic of the list didn’t seem to add up. For example, there was the “mineral water manufacturer” located on a street listed in Salt River. And the urban farms located in Philippi seemingly got flagged too.

At the top of the list, though, was Haywood Road in Crawford Street with a whopping 702 000 liters of water a month.

But it turns out this listing was probably an underground burst pipe which the city never bothered to fix and which resulted in a bill of a whopping R119 000 water bill for a Cape Town resident.

According to TimesLive, the man who received the giant bill was not aware of the leak until he received his bill and the city only checked the meter at the end of January.

A man speaking to Timeslive claims he is the neighbour of the person who owns the property ans says that the city told him they couldn’t fix the problem because the leak was on private property.

“This man is stressing. He feels embarrassed, guilty and victimised, and has concerns over how to pay the bill,” the unidentified man’s neighbour told TimesLive.

He also said that if the city had had bothered to check the man’s meter when it was scheduled to, the problem would have been detected earlier.