Water in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Port Byron has been shut off over a disputed water bill.

The Town of Mentz and village are disputing an Oct. 22, 2008 water bill amounting to $2,494.55 sent to the town from the village for cemetery water usage.

“At least 270,000 gallons leaked that summer,” Mentz town board member Jack O'Neil said.

Mentz Town Supervisor Peter Marshall said the town has offered to pay a portion of the bill based on prior usage, and said that he hand delivered a check for $478 to the village, which he termed “a reasonable amount.”

Village trustees will have to decide how to handle the deficit. O'Neil has been representing the town on the matter at village meetings. Most likely both boards will have to meet to hash out the issue.

O'Neil explained that the village regularly turns off water to the cemetery, owned by the town, in the fall and turns it on again in the spring so that the cemetery line won't freeze. The pipe connected to the cemetery was disconnected from the meter, and billing was put on vacancy, indicating a minimum charge of $12 per quarter for no water usage.

However, what appears to be a combination of human error and a glitch in the system, left the town with no cemetery water bill for all of 2007 after a new meter was installed in the meter pit near there.

“We never got a bill,” O'Neil said, “because somehow the new meter was never entered into the system.”

The line was hooked up again to the meter at the beginning of 2008. At that time, the meter had been entered, but the vacancy status never changed, so bills for vacancy were sent to the town until early October, when the system was switched to live.

O'Neil said when workers went to unhook the line again at the end of October, they found the meter pit full of water, suggesting it was not hooked up properly and the metered water was leaking out.

“The water was leaking on the cemetery side from the first of April,” O'Neil said. He also noted it hadn't been leaking in 2007.

After having been billed in $12 increments for the cemetery, the town was hit with a whopping sum in October that apparently had accumulated in the meter and was finally read by a hand-held device actually registered in the village's computer.

Linda Margensey, clerk/treasurer for the village of Port Byron, said a new person was working in the office and left it on vacancy.

“I've had other people tell us that some people were coming at night and taking water,” she said, “and that spigots were left running.”

The cemetery has four spigots to accommodate visitors who want to water plants on graves.

O'Neil disagrees and maintains that the leak resulted from a badly connected pipe and said the new metering system must be flawed because it took so long for the leak to be discovered. O'Neil, who has worked with computers for 40 years understands how leaks can be flagged in the system, he said.

“If a computer system is designed right,” he said, “when a reading for a vacant meter doesn't agree or there's an unusual reading, it alerts the customer.” He said the company who supplied the village with the system should be contacted.

Marshall said he had asked the village to turn on the water for Memorial Day, but village officials refused.

Margensey said, “The trustees decided not to turn on the water because if they did it for the town, then they would have no leg to stand on when they turned it off for a private resident.”

The village board meets again on Monday, June 8, at 7:30 p.m.

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or kathleen.barran@lee.net

If you go

What: Port Byron village board

meeting

When: 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 8

Where: 52 Utica St., Port Byron