Woman to Pay $69.10 : $922 Utility Bill Watered Down to Size

The water department has finally agreed that Renate Galli’s gophers could not have been that thirsty.

On Friday the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District’s attorney, Wayne Lemieux, said it has decided to give up trying to collect a $922 bill from Galli, ending a yearlong dispute.

The quarrel began when Galli received a bill for December, 1983, and January, 1984, saying she had used 695,000 gallons of water, enough to create a pond half the size of a football field and five feet deep.

Galli pointed out that there was no pond on her property and argued that a leak of so much water, which would have required a flow of 15 gallons a minute for a month, would have sent a cascade of water flowing out of her hilltop home, swamping the neighbors downhill. The neighbors said they saw no sign of a new river.

The water district insisted that her meter was functioning properly so the water must have entered her property somehow, and that it was her responsibility to pay for it.

She appealed without success to the district’s board of directors. She said one of the directors told her that large amounts of water could leak into holes, claiming he once emptied a swimming pool down a gopher hole.

“Such a leak as this, it would not drown gophers, it would put out the fires of hell,” she commented at the time.

Richard Baird, general manager of the water district, said Friday that he had come around to the position that the district’s argument did not hold water. Something--what will probably never be known--must have gone wrong with the meter because there is no evidence that such a large amount of water was ever present on her property, he said.

“That’s an awful lot of water,” he agreed.

Galli and the district agreed to a bill of $69.10, slightly more than her usual bill of $35 to $50. Since she had already paid $50 on account, that cut the amount due to $19.10.