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By Amy Davis & Andrea Slaydon, KPRC 2

I’ll never forget watching 95-year-old Ray Dittmar navigate his uneven lawn with a walker, getting down on his hands and knees to read his own water meter. He called me when the city of Houston told him he had used 111,000 gallons of water in one month. They billed the widower $2,017. Dittmar lived alone in his home of 45 years, historically using less than 500 gallons of water a month.

We knew something was wrong at the Houston Water Department when similar complaints began pouring in, between 10 and 20 a week. City leaders refused to acknowledge the increasing protests and our requests for information about inflated and inaccurate bills. They were gaslighting customers and us. Instead of continuing to cover each customer as the latest unlucky person who needed help, we gave our coverage of the water billing problems a name: Drained. Customers were drained from disputing unusually high and unexpected water bills. The people who paid were financially drained, as were taxpayers supporting the water infrastructure.

Matching public records with personal stories

We had more anecdotal evidence than we needed, a database of hundreds of customers with unexplained bills. We submitted dozens of open records requests and we used that responsive information to add context to our people-driven stories.

Some of the data we requested included:

  • The zip codes with the highest average water bills and how much water those customers used, on average, each month.
  • The number of customers who applied for adjustments to their high bills and how often customers were approved or denied.
  • The audio recording of one customer’s water bill hearing, so viewers could hear firsthand how unfair the process to appeal or dispute an unusually large, unexplained bill was.

Getting Their Attention

The debacle was well-recognized by customers and viewers by the fall of 2023; but city leaders refused to acknowledge the widespread problems. The director of Houston Public Works denied our requests for interviews. The mayor wouldn’t speak with us, on or off camera. Holding leaders accountable is much more difficult when they dodge your questions and ignore constituents. How could we make them hear the complaints that had reached a crushing crescendo?

We asked customers who reached out to us to join us at City Hall to address council members in the public comment session. One by one, 27 water customers briefed the council on their frustrations with their water bills in the thousands of dollars. Some senior citizens cried. One dad explained how he had to tell his children they couldn’t go on a Father’s Day outing when the water department drafted nearly $3000 from his checking account for an erroneous bill they refused to investigate. This is the day the tide began to turn 18 months into our investigation.

Rolling Investigations lead to new discoveries

As viewers began to recognize our team’s efforts to expose and solve these issues, I received an anonymous email. The writer was concerned about possible corruption in the water department. The tipster alleged the manager in charge of awarding emergency contracts for broken waterline repairs was steering business to her family and friends. The contracts were easy to track. City Council approved $87 million in emergency waterline repairs. Because they were classified as “emergency,” there was no bidding process or background check of any of the companies, so we did that ourselves.

All of the businesses selected to receive the money were listed on the public council agenda. We looked up the business records with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. Several of the businesses had only registered weeks or months before they received the multi-million dollar water contracts. We backgrounded the business owners and the registered addresses. This is how we discovered some were owned by water department employees already paid with tax dollars for their day jobs. Others were owned by relatives of water department employees with no prior experience in waterline repair. It seemed obvious that these conflicts of interest would be enough for the mayor to halt the contracts. Instead, he dodged us and refused to answer questions about why no one vetted the companies awarded millions of dollars.

This part of our “Drained” investigation was also told in multiple parts. Each time we aired a story, another tip came in. After our first story about the shady contracts, a man who had worked repairing the leaks called. He helped explain how the city water manager hired the workers and then plugged them in to the companies she chose to receive the money.

He also helped explain why repairing the water leaks cost taxpayers $50 million dollars more in 2023 than the year prior. He told us that on some days, all he did was drive to the location of a water leak and pull out a barrel to block the area. That cost taxpayers $185 per barrel. We requested the records to verify what he told us and found a lot of examples that corroborated his story. The city paid one company $39,610 for posting road and sidewalk closure signs on just one day. That money didn’t cover any actual repairs.

Holding city leaders accountable

We knew it was important to get the mayor on camera, whether he avoided questions or explained why projects were continuing despite what we’d uncovered.  We showed up to a public news conference he attended on a different subject and waited to talk with him afterwards. His surprising reaction as mayor of the fourth largest city in the country garnered more attention for our investigation than every promotion we had aired the preceding 18 months. 

“You’re rude!” he told me, scolding me for approaching him in a public building on a subject important to millions of Houston water customers. The exchange was shared and broadcast all across the country, forcing him to address the problems.

The water department manager we exposed was fired within two weeks of our broadcast. The Texas Rangers began investigating the shady contracts, assisting the Harris County District Attorney. Six months passed before a grand jury indicted seven people in the waterline repair scheme. 

The charges ranged from bribery to engaging in organized criminal activity. As is often the case, there was no information coming from the DA or the Rangers while they quietly investigated. 

We used this stretch of time to break new angles and keep the story alive. We did a deep dive into what the city manager did with the millions of dollars she received; and we exposed new billing problems plaguing customers. Our series that began with a singular path forked. We were covering both the water billing issues and corruption in the department. Our hyper vigilance forced major change. 

Getting Results

In April 2024, a new Houston mayor vowed to fix the water bill problems. He paused the water bills for every residential water customer while crews could replace outdated meter technology to ensure accurate reads. The city billed all customers a fixed amount for up to seven months until meters could be tested for accuracy. The system still isn’t perfect, but it is immensely better.

In February 2025, all seven defendants in the waterline repair corruption scandal made plea deals. The manager who orchestrated the fraud received a 10-year prison sentence. The judge ordered the manager’s assistant — also a city employee — to pay $50,000 in restitution while on probation.  

To date, we have helped water customers get credits and refunds totaling nearly $300,000. Ray Dittmar received a refund of the more than $2000 he over paid. I recently stopped by his home to check on him. He told me he hasn’t had any more surprises on his water bills. And now, at 99 years-old, he describes himself as a “bit long in the tooth,” perfectly content with his consistent and accurate monthly months. 

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