Slow City Response Results In 92-Year-Old Hit With Huge Water Bill

Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter

UPDATE (Tuesday February 10, 2014 10:04 P.M.)

After CBS 11's Robbie Owens shared a 92-year- old Fort Worth woman's story of a strain with a water bill help began to pour in. A neighbor walked right over Tuesday evening and handed Venita Scott $40.

Viewers like chip Roy from Waxahachie are also chipping in.

"I just thought well that's not right. Good people shouldn't have bad things happen to them. And I'm just going to call CBS and see if I can do something," says Roy.

Another viewer even called the CBS 11 newsroom to ask how he could help pay off the bill in full. That gentleman said he couldn't help thinking of his wife's grandmother and how that bill would have impacted her.

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - A pipe, in the lawn of a 92-year-old North Texas woman, bursts and help doesn't come for hours. The repair is finally made, but the elderly woman is stuck with a huge water bill!

The water break outside Venita Scott's home sent 100,000 gallons of water rushing down the street. It turns out it was literally water down the drain, especially when the soon-to-be centenarian counts every dime of her income.

Last month, Mrs. Scott woke to find water gushing from the front yard of her Fort Worth home. She remembers the event vividly. "The meter box was full of water. No way in hell could I go out there and turn that thing off!"

Knowing there was nothing she could do. Mrs. Scott immediately had someone call the Fort Worth Water Department's emergency line. "I don't hear too well on the telephone," she explained. "So, I called my friend and she called for me."

That call was made around 8:00 Saturday morning. After several hours and several more calls Mrs. Scott's daughter, Sandy Kurtzman, got involved.

Kurtzman said their calls seemed to annoy city workers. "Each time we were met with… you could almost hear a yawn on the other end of the line."

After lengthy conversations Kurtzman tried a personal approach. "Then I asked her, 'what would you do if it were your mother?' That finally got some action. An hour later, we had a crew out here."

More than 12 hours had passed from the time of the first call until the time of the repair. That meant thousands of Mrs. Scott's water had quite simply washed away.

When her monthly bill came Mrs. Scott said, "It was $675.07." Her typical December bill is less than $50.

"She nearly fell through the floor," Kurtzman said of her mother. "She can't pay it. She makes just over $600 a month. She doesn't have that kind of extra money to pay."

The family meticulously documented the problem and has asked the city to waive the amount obviously tied to the leak. But they are being told the department's policy is to only reduce the amount by half.

"You can only stretch a penny so far, and she's got it to where it's almost copper wire," Kurtzman said of her mother's finances. "She's taking the money from her grocery budget… that's where she's taking it from."

Mrs. Scott says she did everything she could to report the pair in a timely fashion. "The main thing is if they had gotten out here at a halfway decent time, it [water] wouldn't have been running all the way down to Vickery," she said.

There is a separate city program that helps residents struggling with utility bills, but that program is completely out of cash.

(©2015 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)