$21,000 DPU Bill For One Month Service

by Charles McGuigan 08.2026

Many Richmond residents in recent months have complained about exorbitant public utility bills. And though the Department of Public Utilities  (DPU) has made progress in resolving some of these issues, for others the wheels turn slowly, and, in some cases, not at all.

One of the most egregious utility bills went from bad to worse after the resident contacted DPU.

It all started back in January of 2024 when Megan (not her real name) received an outrageously high utility bill on a property she manages for her deceased father’s trust. The average monthly utility bill for this commercial site located on Ownby Lane was well under $2,000. But that January, the bill Megan opened up was for ten times that amount, covering a single month’s service.

“At that time I went back in the records for about four years and the average monthly bill was around $1,800 a month,” says Megan. “And then I got a bill for one month for $21,000.”
She immediately contacted DPU and was told by an associate that they would dispatch an employee to check the meter. A city employee came to the site, but could not find the meter.

Megan picked up the phone and again contacted the DPU office. She posed a very simple question: “How are you sending me a bill if you can't find the meter?”

The City’s response:  “If you'll look at your bills, you'll notice that some say A and some say E. A is for an actual reading. E stands for an estimated reading.”

So Megan retrieved the past five years of utility bills, and compared them. “The difference between the actual and the estimated readings was just pennies,” she says.

She again contacted DPU, which acknowledged there was a problem, and they told her that until it was resolved they would not interrupt service. Then Megan received a letter from DPU. “It said, ‘You are one of the one percent of accounts that has an error,’” she says. “’We're working to correct the error.’”

Megan never heard back from the City, yet month after month the $21,000 charge, along with penalties, appeared on her bills.

And then this past February, fully two years after all this nonsense began, she contacted DPU again for another reason.  “I was calling about a different issue because they continued to send me a bill for a building that I've never had any contact with and I don't know anything about,” says Megan.

The woman on the other end asked her if she needed help with anything else and Megan said, “Well, actually, yes. There's this outstanding situation and I just don't understand what's going on. I told her all of the history.”

Megan also told this DPU associate she believed the City charged her that one month for an entire year. The numbers seemed to add up. “That looks like that's exactly what happened,” said the DPU associate. “Let me run it upstairs and hopefully we can get this resolved.”

A couple months went by and Megan heard nothing.  Then in the early spring she received another utility bill from the City. On this bill she was still being charged the $21,000 from 2024, along with late  fees, and, get this, another $21,000 for a single month’s service. In all, she was being charged more than fifty grand.

To put it mildly, Megan was stunned. She reached out to her City Council representative, Kenya Gibson. “I didn’t hear back from her, but her liaison (Sarandon Elliott) called me and said, ‘You know, you should hear from the DPU, we've put in a call. If you don't hear back within two weeks, call me back.’” Megan never heard back from the City.

She again called her Council representative. “Again, I didn’t hear from her, but I got a call back from the liaison saying, ‘We hear you, we know. We've talked directly to someone at DPU. You will get a call back in the next week.’”

And guess what. “That was probably one or two months ago,” says Megan. “So nothing. I mean absolutely nothing has happened and at this point. I just look at the bill and throw my hands in the air because I don't know what to do about it anymore. Both times I was told by the liaison, ‘This has been escalated, DPU is going to call you.’ And that just didn't happen. So I don’t know if that's DPU falling down, or if that's the Council person's office not actually forwarding this.”

Her level of frustration has grown over the intervening months.   “I've tried with the City, I've tried with the City Council person,” Megan says. “My next step really is talking to you, and making it more public.”

NORTH of the JAMES sent an email to the City’s public information officer requesting the status of Megan’s account. As of press time we have not heard back from them.