By Caleb Allison and Jasmine Stark
In March of 2024, Cameron Foss got a phone call from a Forsyth water technician. The man had just finished a two-hour test on Cameron’s waterline and was calling with something he said he’d never seen in his 30 years on the job: over 10,000 gallons of water had been used in the short window he was there.
Cameron, in Macon at the time, dropped everything and did his best to avoid the pitfalls of I-75. Meanwhile, the tech said he’d shut the water off and told him to call back once the issue was located.
Thus began the journey that involved a grueling week of finding the leaky culprit and then months of dead ends and dollar signs.
At first, the obvious suspects: pool, plumbing, fixtures, all of which checked out fine. But then they stumbled upon something more unusual: a buried valve box on Cameron’s lot that wasn’t placed by him. From it, they followed a line that stretched underground all the way to the neighboring property. All of it hidden under dirt.
On that next-door lot, which is owned by the same people who originally sold Cameron his house, sits a garden. As they followed the line, it turned out the illegal tie-in was feeding water directly from Cameron’s main line to the garden’s sprinkler system. It seemed this line was connected back when the two properties were owned by the same people and the connection was not disclosed to Cameron nor his wife when they purchased the home.
With the help of his pool guy and property manager, the three men managed to isolate the valve and ran a final test. What they found was a broken pipe on the neighbor’s side, which was directly responsible for bleeding over a million gallons of water straight into the river behind Cameron’s home.
Cameron capped the pipe. Removed the connection. Problem solved, in theory. Except the bill remained.
Water bill with the five figure past due amount.
The Neighbors, Gone
Cameron reached out to the owners of the neighboring property. The husband didn’t respond, but the wife did, if only briefly. She told Cameron she’d file an insurance claim and that since his purchase, the couple had divorced and her now ex-husband had no intention of being involved.
Cameron sent over maps, photos, everything the insurance company asked for. An adjuster came out to inspect the damage in person. But it didn’t matter. The policy had lapsed a month before the incident. The insurance claim was denied. When Cameron let her know, the wife’s response was simple: “Good luck.”
The City’s Response
The City’s position on matters like these is that they do not forgive water bills once the water goes through the meter. Because the water went through Cameron’s meter, the city considers him responsible for paying it. Cameron, on the other hand, does not feel this bill should be his responsibility and in February of 2025 reached out to several city officials to share his situation.
On March 25th, about a year after the initial bill, a meeting was arranged between the city manager, the mayor, the assistant manager, the head of the water department, and Mr. and Mrs. Foss. Cameron stated his case to the city officials and asked for leniency as the broken pipe that caused the extremely high water bill was not on his property. Cameron says he was told after this meeting that they would discuss this case and get back to him in two weeks.
On May 6th, Mr. Foss received a letter from the assistant city manager, Regina Ivie, stating that they were “unable to provide a discount on the charges assessed.” The letter went on to say “As a courtesy, the late fee previously associated with this bill has been removed and no additional late fees or penalties will be assessed on this billing,” and “To assist in resolving the outstanding balance we can authorize a payment contract for the total amount owed, allowing for payments to be made through December 2025.”
Cameron asked if they would consider letting him pay for the water at cost; not retail, just what the city itself paid. Their answer remained: the bill would stick as it was.
According to Cameron, $1,081.07 of interest was removed from his bill after the March meeting but he has continued to receive late charges since then. He sent us a transaction history that shows that for the last three months, he has been paying his bills before the monthly due date of the 5th but has received a late fee each of those months ranging from seven to seventeen dollars.
Series of payments and charges on Cameron’s water account from March to June of 2025.
When asked about these late fees, Regina Ivie stated “She would look into them and remove any late fees that were not related to late payment of Mr. Foss’s monthly bills.”
Shut off Notice
Recently, Cameron received late notice from the City of Forsyth stating that if he does not pay his full balance by the 18th of June, his water will be shut off. When asked, Mayor Wilson said that the late notice was sent because Cameron had not contacted them to set up a payment plan as the letter from Regina Ivie had requested.
Regina Ivie said that she has administratively established a contract since she was not contacted by Mr. Foss and he now has until his cut off date in December of 2025 to pay the bill.
When asked why he had not set up a payment plan, Cameron stated “Right now, our issue is with the lack of empathy on the price of the water that we are paying. Water at retail vs water at cost. I am hesitant to enter a repayment agreement, when the total of the debt is in dispute.”
Words From Mayor Wilson
When discussing this case Mayor Wilson said “I agree that Mr. Foss is a victim as well and he has my sympathy as he’s going through this. It seems to me he has a civil case against the owner of the neighboring property who sold him his house without disclosing the connected water line.” The Mayor stated that during their meeting on March 25th, the only blame Cameron put on the city was when he asked why he was not notified of the leak sooner and it was explained that the city does not have real time advanced monitoring on their meters which means the city couldn’t have known about the leak until the meter was read at which point, they notified him.
Mayor Wilson said “We do not forgive water bills once they go through the meter and if we made an exception for Foss we would have to make an exception for other cases and somebody has to pay for the water treatment, delivery, meter reading, and everything else associated with running the water system.”
When asked about the suggestion of charging Cameron at cost rather than retail for the disputed amount, Mayor Wilson stated that it was something the water team discussed after the March 25th meeting but they ultimately decided against it. He said he was unsure of their precise reasoning but said that there was no precedent for the city reducing a bill to at cost pricing and that it is important to be careful when creating new precedents as they would have to be applied to all cases moving forward.
A Civil Case
Cameron has attempted to get his neighbors to cover the bill and estimates that he’s spent over $5000 through removing the illegal line, hiring contractors, tracking down the owners, paying legal fees, and speaking with attorneys but has not been able to get the responsible party to pay for any of it. Now it looks like he will have to pay another $10,796.49 to pay off the rest of this five figure water bill. He can certainly continue trying to recoup his losses from the owners of the neighboring property but that would only require more time and money to continue chasing them down.
