DWP Comes Clean: Wachs’ $205,667 Bill Explained as ‘Honest Mistake’

The mystery behind the $205,667 utility bill mailed to City Councilman Joel Wachs has been solved: It was an “honest mistake,” DWP officials said Monday.

An “awfully upset” employee responsible for the goof came forward and will not be disciplined, said Anthony Cavallaro, commercial director in charge of billing for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The DWP’s explanation failed to mollify Wachs, who was told last week that the error was probably the work of a prankster.

“Now I’m even more confused,” Wachs said Monday. He added that he has begun receiving letters and phone calls from other DWP customers with billing problems.

The bill sent to Wachs was intended for a health care company and included water and sewer charges of $80,091.94 and $126,621.42 that were added incorrectly to total $205,667.05.

DWP officials said the problem stemmed from the unnamed employee’s use of a computer program last used earlier this year to prepare a duplicate bill for Wachs after he publicly railed about what he called an outrageous “conservation” surcharge on his bill. As it turned out, the $19.11 charge was not for water conservation but for water waste.

When the health care firm requested a duplicate bill, the employee failed to type the company’s address over Wachs’, officials said.

While the total charge was correct, the employee erroneously included a subcharge twice and then failed to double-check her arithmetic, Cavallaro said.

“It was kind of an obscure error that probably wouldn’t be repeated in a hundred years,” Cavallaro said. “This happens to be a conscientious employee who was trying to help out a customer.”

Nonetheless, Cavallaro said he has reminded his staff members about the importance of checking their work.

The incident was the latest in a series of DWP bungles and embarrassments.

Last month, the agency had to pay a $333,407 penalty for a late tax filing because of a mail room mix-up over $3.40 in postage. A month earlier, the agency had been pressured to cancel a $25,000 contract with the Center for Crisis Management at USC to study what went wrong in the agency’s failure to obtain approval of an 11% rate hike.