Editor's note: The meeting was cancelled due to Department of Watershed Management Commissioner Rob Hunter's resignation announcement Sept. 7. Council members are working on scheduling a new meeting.

Buckhead residents’ concerns about high water bills are far from dried up.

The Atlanta City Council’s utilities committee will meet with officials from the city’s Department of Watershed Management at 10 a.m. Thursday to address concerns about spikes in residents’ July water bills.

In August, about 75 households in the Wildwood neighborhood of Buckhead raised questions about their July bills, which in some cases increased more than five times the cost of June’s bills. July 1 marked a 12.5 percent increase in water rates, but some residents contend the increase does not account for some high bills.

District 8 City Councilwoman Yolanda Adrean, who is a utilities committee member and represents west Buckhead, said they are very serious about solving the problem.

“We want [Watershed Management] to do everything they can to determine whether there is a software glitch or something systematic causing these glitches,” she said.

Ms. Adrean said it was important for residents to understand, however, how the process works for disputing bills and that the city has a tiered water billing system.

“The more water you use, the more expensive it is per ccf [100 cubic feet of water],” she said. “You could double your water usage but the bill would more than double. I don’t think we’ve done a good job of communicating that to our residents.”

Wildwood neighborhood resident Bill Lucas, who organized a community meeting with Watershed commissioner Rob Hunter Aug. 16, said he will not give up until a solution to the spiked bills is found.

“This started very grassroots and it’s very quickly mushroomed into now 12 neighborhoods involved,” he said.

“We have hundreds of people that have these problems that just appeared in June and July and again in August.”

Lucas said he was planning on trying to host another community meeting. He also said he would like to see a third party audit the department.

“There’s very little potential that there’s a problem with the meter itself,” he said, noting that the new meters used by the city have a high accuracy. “My theory is that it all comes back to billing and software and the way Watershed is billing people.”

Whatever the direction, he said all affected parties would have to come together.

“This needs to be an organized effort of all the people who have problems,” said Lucas.