WAPA Sued Over Allegedly Sky-High Bills from Faulty Meters and Broken Dispute Process; $39M Sought

Examples cited include a 90-year-old receiving $2,000 bills, a solar-powered home still overcharged, a $3,700 bill followed by a $4,900 shutoff notice, and the Caribbean Kidney Center, which says inflated water bills forced it to shut down STT operations.

Several Virgin Islands residents who say they are being exploited by high estimated bills from the Water and Power Authority have now taken the utility to court.

A civil complaint in District Court names WAPA, its CEO Karl Knight, and Itron Inc as defendants against a charge of due process violation. Several plaintiffs are listed including HealthQuest, LLC, which does business in the territory as Caribbean Kidney Center, the dialysis services provider which recently shuttered its St. Thomas operations.

Attorney Terri Griffiths, who had much of an earlier lawsuit against WAPA, Itron and other defendants tossed out by a District Court judge, is focusing this complaint on the bills generated as a result of faulty Itron meters and WAPA's practice of issuing bills based on estimated usage. The two issues result in bills that are unreasonably high, the lawsuit claims, for sums that are many times what the customers’ normal usage would be.

The established process to challenge these suspiciously high bills is broken, the suit alleges, with neither WAPA nor the Public Services Commission responsive to complaints in a timely manner. All the while, the eye-watering amounts billed continue to pile up as arrears, which in at least one case WAPA has allegedly used as reason for disconnection.