When Janice Torilli opened her quarterly water/sewer bill last week, she was in for a shock she could least afford at this time of year. The bill, reflecting water usage from June until Sept. 22, was $508, or $204 more than what she paid for the same period last year.

Torilli is not alone. A tidal wave of similar stories of dramatic increases in water usage hit social media and resulted in a deluge of calls to the city Water Division.

Mayor-elect Frank Picozzi, who also got his bill but hadn’t opened it as of Friday morning, saw the comments and contacted Terry DiPetrillo, director of the Warwick Water Division.

Picozzi had a good idea his bill was going to be a lot higher, as his pool cover had a hole in it and when he pumped water off the top he was actually emptying the pool.

DiPetrillo had answers.

The bottom line is that between June and October of this year, the city purchased 1.7 billion gallons of water from the Providence Water Supply Board, a total of 333 million more gallons than it did for the same period in 2019. That’s a 27 percent increase in water usage for the period. Providence is the wholesale provider for Warwick water. All of Warwick – 27,000 customers – is served by the Warwick system with the exception of Cowesett, Apponaug and Natick, which have about 4,200 customers that are serviced by the Kent County Water Authority.

“This billing cycle is the highest we have,” DiPetrillo said Monday, explaining that it covers the summer months when water consumption traditionally increases.

But this summer was no ordinary summer. Not only was it hotter and drier than many summers, there was a pandemic.

Referencing records going back to 1904, DiPetrillo said the summer of 2020 was the hottest on record in Rhode Island. Temperatures exceeded 90 degrees for 23 days and there were three heat waves where the mercury climbed above 90 for three consecutive days. DiPetrillo also notes that this past summer was the 16th driest on record, putting the state in a severe drought.

DiPetrillo attributes the increased usage to homeowners watering their lawns and gardens and the impact of the pandemic. With people staying at home, home gardening blossomed. Then, too, as people worked from home and didn’t go on vacations there was an increase in home use of water for dishwashers, laundry, toilets and showers.

Torilli compared bills between last winter and spring with the one she just received. Her water usage for the hot/dry summer was 5,000 linear feet (37,400 gallons) as compared to 1,500 linear feet for the winter and spring.

Torilli’s cost of water, at $69.85, is a small percentage of the bill. The biggest jump was in sewer usage for a total of $239. The sewer fee is tied to the volume of water used even though that water may be used for irrigating gardens and lawns or replenishing pool water lost to evaporation.

For Torilli to avoid paying a sewer usage fee on water used for her garden and pool, she would need to have a deduct meter installed.

DiPetrillo estimated the cost of a deduct meter at about $250. On top of that, there is a plumbing charge, but he said that generally for those who have lawn sprinkler systems and do a lot of gardening, the meter pays for itself in a few years.

Torilli is not ready to invest in a meter, but she is thinking of 50-gallon drum to collect water from her roof for garden use.

Then, as DiPetrillo points out, there are those who don’t sprinkle their lawns or water their gardens, yet find their bills higher than customary. He believes leaks are the reason and toilets the culprits. As a card distributed by the city points out, toilet leaks are hard to find and are usually caused by a bad flapper, flapper value seat, bad water control valve, defective overflow tube or improperly positioned float arm. The card contains a tablet that is dropped into the toilet tank. If the water in the toilet bowl changes color in 15 minutes, there’s a leak.

According to the card, a 1/32 drip can add up to 18,500 gallons of water over three months. A trickle of 1/16 results in 74,000 gallons.

A 25 percent increase in the wholesale purchase price of Providence Water has a minimal impact on the Warwick bills. The cost increase is a direct pass through to the customer resulting in an additional $4.38 for the first 1,000 cubic feet used. It increases proportionally from there.

David Simmons, director of the Kent County Water Authority that also buys Providence water in addition to its own wells, said the increased cost was taken under consideration in its recent billing. In order to absorb the increase, Simmons said, the billing was coordinated with the conclusion of a surcharge to pay for the installation of new meters across the system. This actually resulted in a 15 percent decline in rates, he said.

But that’s not what made news in the last month.

When some customers received their Kent County Water bills, they turned to Facebook and other social media to broadcast their outrage that the authority was blaming increases of 30 percent and more on usage and/or leaks. State Sen. Leonidas Raptakis picked up the issue, rallying his legislative colleagues to call for an investigation into the authority and claims that newly installed meters are faulty.

Simmons and the authority responded point-by-point to issues raised by the legislators in a joint press release reaching the same conclusion made by DiPetrillo – it was an extraordinary summer and people used a lot more water.

DiPetrillo said by being transparent and responding to customer inquiries, he is hopeful people will take into consideration how hot it was this summer and much more water they used.

More than 200 customers were notified of an extreme increase in usage prior to billing, he said. As a practice, the division earmarks customers with abrupt increases, recommending they check for leaks if they are not aware of a situation where they are using more water.

Simmons said with completion of installation of the new meters, which transmit data, the authority is considering monthly, rather than quarterly billing. This would even out payments and make customers more conscious of their water consumption.

DiPetrillo would like to bring monthly billing to Warwick, however, only about a third of the system has radio transmission meters. The balance requires a visit to the home from a reader (the reading is done from outside the house).

To equip Warwick with the meters used by the Kent County Water Authority would cost $6 million just for the meters, DiPetrillo estimated.