Home › The Clock Started Before You Knew
The Clock Started Before You Knew
This is the detail that turns a recoverable bill into an unrecoverable one, and it is almost always in the small print rather than the headline.
The essentials
Leak adjustment schemes start their clock at a bill, not at the day you worked out what was wrong. By the time a household understands there is a leak, part of the eligible window has usually gone. Reading your own utility’s terms early is what protects the claim.
The clock does not start when you find out
New York City counts its 120 days from the date of the original bill. Not from the date you noticed, not from the date a contractor confirmed it, and not from the date it was repaired.
Think about what that means in practice. A quarterly bill arrives. It looks high and you assume a hot summer or a visitor. Six weeks later the next one is higher still and you start asking questions. By the time somebody has come out, located the leak and dug it up, a substantial part of the window has already gone — and it was going while you were doing nothing wrong.
Source: New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Leak Forgiveness Program.
Which is why an unexplained bill is urgent
The instinct on a strange bill is to wait for the next one and see whether it settles down. On any scheme with a deadline that is the single most expensive thing you can do, because waiting one cycle can consume most of the window.
The move that costs nothing is to check the meter that same week. Every scheme we have read treats a meter that registers with all water off as the thing that turns a suspicion into a claim.
There is sometimes an extension, and it has a condition
DEP will extend the repair period by a further 180 days where you can show the leak could not reasonably have been discovered inside the original window. That is a real provision and it is worth asking about wherever you are.
It is also a provision you have to argue for, which is another reason to keep a record of when you first noticed something and what you did next. What that record should contain is short and mostly dates.
Frequency limits are a second clock
Both schemes quoted on this site limit how often the scheme can be used: New York will not grant forgiveness if it granted some in the last two years, and Oregon City allows a request once every 24 months.
So if a property has had a credit recently, the arithmetic on this leak changes. It is worth knowing before you plan around the money.
Source: New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Leak Forgiveness Program; City of Oregon City, Oregon, Water Leak Policy and Adjustment Application.
Next
Check with your water utility first.If the leak is on their side it is not your bill and not your excavation, and that call is free. If it is yours, come back and we will route you to a local contractor who can find it, chosen on the ZIP code you give. We never charge you either way. Nor must it be a leak: whatever the plumbing is doing, this number reaches somebody.
Call (888) 530-1544