“Don’t tell me it’s a leak, because I know it isn’t,” Peter Broomfield, operations aide at the water division, remembers the woman on the other end of the line insisting.

He listened and agreed to send over a crew to see why her utility bill for the last quarter nearly doubled. Broomfield doubted it was the meter, and having reviewed the water consumption for the periods, he could see she had used a lot of water.

As he suspected, a toilet leak was the culprit.

The irony, notes water division chief Terry DiPetrillo, is that if the meter was at fault, the bill would have been far less, not more.

Nonetheless, the latest round of utility bills unleashed a torrent of complaints over higher than usual bills and assertions that the meter was at fault.

DiPetrillo said water authorities across the state are experiencing the same thing – customers can’t believe they face bills that can be twice what they were the previous quarter. What DiPetrillo points out is that the summer of 2020 was one of the hottest on record, there was a drought and there was the pandemic, meaning people were working from home and using more water.

The numbers illustrate the story. Warwick bought 1.7 billion gallons of water from its wholesale supplier, Providence Water, this past summer for an increase of 27 percent over the same period in 2019.

Now that it’s cold outside and maybe there’s even snow on the ground, people have forgotten watering their gardens and lawns or refilling their pool, Broomfield said. Last summer, one of those complaining about her high water bill, after insisting she didn’t use any more water compared with 2019, paused to confess she to watering her lawn and garden twice daily.

Indeed, increased water use is the reason for the higher bills.

Toilet leaks, as much as people refuse to believe it, are a primary culprit. A constantly running toilet, which is considered a leak, can account for 10,000 cubic feet of water – or more than 70,000 gallons – in a quarter, said Broomfield. Often, toilet leaks are barely detectable, as a flapper may be cracked or not properly seated. Other issues may relate to the shutoff valve or chain adjustment. The division provides test tabs that are placed in the tank and show up as colored water in the bowl if there is a leak after flushing.

For those without deduct meters for outside water use and with sewer service, the increase water usage is especially dramatic.

To illustrate the effect, DiPetrillo pulled out the bill for a Nausauket homeowner whose combination water/sewer utility bill was $646 for the summer billing as compared to $381 in 2019. Last summer, the homeowner used 6,500 cubic feet of water compared to 3,800 cubic feet the year before. The cost of water, including related charges, went from $136 to $250. The sewer portion of the bill went from $235 to $388, all because of the increased use of water.

Deduct meters, which DiPetrillo estimated at $250, can pay for themselves in a few short years if significant quantities of water are being used for gardens, pool and lawn sprinkling.

During the transition, Mayor-elect Frank Picozzi made a review of utility bills a priority. So far, DiPetrilo said nothing out of the ordinary has been found. The issue has gotten increased play since state legislators called on the Public Utilities Commission to investigate complaints from Kent County Water Authority customers over unusually high bills.

“We dread the December bill run every year,” said Broomfield. As that billing reflects higher summer usage, there are always calls.

“I don’t think there were any more calls this year than others,” said Bloomfield.

There’s no question, however, that the bills have received a lot more attention.