Dawn Conville found the Troy Water Department ultimatum hanging on her front door Tuesday: Pay $498 or her water would be shut off on Aug. 16.

Conville is the latest in a stream of Collar City homeowners who have contacted me to report high-handed treatment by the city Water Department, where consumers who dispute their bills or alleged usage are told to pay up or face dire consequences.

I consider it a virtual shakedown of Troy water consumers, who endure a cold shoulder from city officials because Troy has established no system of due-process rights for residents who believe their water bills are inaccurate.

"I am frustrated beyond belief," Conville told me Thursday. "I've been fighting with them for too long about this."

For more than a year and a half, Conville, 42, has been trying to determine why the water bills for the house she bought in 2005 have been inconsistent and unpredictable.

Her actual recorded quarterly usage was 7,700 gallons, back in the spring and summer of 2006, when she was billed $24.02 for water.

But in the last quarter of 2007, her alleged actual usage jumped to 27,700 gallons, and it has bounced up and down with no apparent pattern or reason since then. The peak came late in 2009 and in early 2010, when she received quarterly bills putting her usage at 40,100 gallons in October 2009 and 47,500 gallons on Jan. 19, 2010.

Those bills were for $137 and $163 (water portion only), respectively, and that's when Conville contacted the Water Department, started questioning the department's calculations of her usage and asked for help in determining the cause of the fluctuating readings.

The answer remains elusive.

The Water Department has twice conducted "flow tests" at her home to determine if she had a leak. Both times, no evidence of a leak was detected.

Conville also has searched assiduously on her own for some explanation for the inconsistent water bills.

"If I have a major leak, of course I want to know about it," she said.

Her house came with a lawn sprinkler system, which she has not used since the summer of 2009, but she decided to have that checked and serviced, anyhow. Nothing was found to be amiss.

Philip Kamrass

Conville said she finally felt relief this April, when Troy Public Utilities Commissioner Bill Bradley personally visited her house to check things out. She says he, too, found no leaks -- though he did take note of an old-style toilet and suggested she might want to replace it.

In May, she said, she was thrilled to see a bill that finally seemed to be in line with her actual water usage. The calculated water usage was 5,500 gallons, and she paid the new water and sewer charges totalling $52.20 in full.

She did not, however, pay the disputed back charges, she says, since Bradley had agreed that there were unexplained irregularities in her bills and he indicated the charges for "past usage" should be addressed in some way.

Then, this Tuesday, she found the brightly colored termination notice on her door. She contacted city officials, including Bradley and Neil Bonesteel, the longtime chief operator at the water plant.

A written response from Bonesteel says, as readers may not be surprised to hear, that Conville still is considered in arrears for her most recent bill because that payment was applied to the amount the city contends she owes for past usage and penalties.

Bonesteel's email also asserts that during his visit to her house, Bradley found a leaking toilet, which he fixed with an adjustment.

"Subsequent to that, multiple readings were taken showing the usage was under 100 gallons per day, indicating a leak had been repaired," he writes, adding "I believe the issues have been resolved."

That response has launched Conville, who works at home as a workers' compensation claims adjuster for an insurance company, into a new level of orbit.

"You just never get a straight answer," she said. "It's 'Nope, you don't have a leak.' Then, it's 'You must have a leak. That's your problem.' Can someone stop talking in circles and give me the real story here?"

In combing through her bills for clues, Conville has found a particularly puzzling inconsistency.

In January 2010, when a sewer pipe was replaced, she says, the Water Department reset her meter to zero. The May 18, 2011, cumulative reading on her last bill was 92,592 gallons, indicating she had used that much water since the meter was reset.

But we added up the quarterly gallons charged on the five bills covering the period from Jan. 19, 2010, to May 18 of this year, and that sum indicates she was billed for a total of 119,001 gallons. That is 26,409 gallons -- or 28 percent -- more than the amount on the meter.

"That, right there, should be enough for them to say, 'We have a problem. How can that be?' " Conville said.

Since there is no verified problem with the meter, Conville has been speculating about a possible clerical error.

"It's probably some stupid thing like someone put the wrong number in the computer and it just kept snowballing," she said. "Why not just check the records? People make mistakes. I understand that."

Conville thought she'd finally found someone willing to take her seriously when Bradley, the public utilities commissioner, came to her house.

"Mr. Bradley said to me, 'Your bills are all over the place.' Those were his exact words," she said.

I tried to reach Bradley to get his take on things several times on Thursday and Friday and, after being encouraged to leave messages -- which I did -- I learned that he was out of the office on vacation.

I also was directed to Jeff Pirro, a spokesman for Mayor Harry Tutunjian, who has responded to my inquiries about water customer problems in the past.

He sent this response via email: "We are aware of Ms. Conville's concerns and city staff has investigated the issues she raised."

I'll leave it to readers to judge how illuminating that is.

Generally, I remain concerned about the lack of rights for Troy water customers who contest their water bills or face huge retroactive charges. I hope that the city's next administration will be more attentive to this issue.

In May, Troy City Court Judge Matthew Turner ruled against retiree Eugene Booth, another city resident who was slapped with a big bill for past water usage.

Booth objected to being billed retroactively -- originally $1,309, reduced to $530 -- for water the city claimed he used over many years, but for which he was not billed at the time. The city contends that its own outdoor device, which city workers were using to calculate Booth's water bills, was faulty.

The city's position is that Booth's actual cumulative usage was recorded on an indoor meter, which was replaced during a meter-upgrade program and had not been read before.

Even if that's so, I believe it is deeply unfair to charge water customers retroactively, years later, for usage that was not detected at the time and for which they were not billed.

Turner decided that Booth hadn't met a legal burden of proof to show that the city's meter readings were inaccurate as a result of fraud, mistake or accident. It does not matter that this is not what Booth believes happened; that's what he had to prove to win his case.

I hope Conville won't find herself facing such an unreasonable standard sometime down the line.

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