Houston Water to Shut Off Service for 15,000 Delinquent Customers Starting Sept. 8

Houston Water plans to start cutting off service on September 8 to customers who are at least 90 days late on their bills and owe more than $500, a move that will affect roughly 15,000 accounts carrying a combined $30 million in unpaid balances.

Houston Public Works Director Randy Macchi said notices are already going out to customers who risk losing service. "Right now, what's happening is notices are going out to customers, just warning them that there is a balance due and that they're at risk of having an interruption to their water service," Macchi said.

The delinquent accounts include ordinary households and at least one business with an unusual history. City records show that business has not paid its water bill since 1997. Over nearly three decades, the balance climbed to about $3.5 million. Houston Public Works is still trying to determine how the debt reached that size, including whether the business changed ownership, records were lost, or other billing failures allowed the account to go unaddressed for so long. The city has not named the business.

That account is the largest among the delinquent balances the city is now trying to collect. Macchi said Houston has reached a point where it can no longer let customers receive water indefinitely without paying for it. "I don't think any reasonable person in the city would say that we should be giving away water for free," he said. "And if someone who pays their bill finds out that someone is not paying their bill and is receiving that water, there's certainly issues of fairness and equity."

The city stopped disconnecting delinquent water customers in 2024, after Mayor John Whitmire's administration began overhauling Houston's water billing system. That pause followed years of reporting that uncovered major flaws in how the city read meters, calculated usage and billed customers. The reporting, part of an ongoing investigation into the water system, documented residents receiving inexplicably high bills, malfunctioning remote meter-reading devices, and other errors that left customers unsure whether their charges were accurate at all.

That scrutiny pushed Houston Public Works to begin replacing thousands of remote meter-reading devices and rework the processes behind billing. The shutoff freeze gave the department room to sort out which delinquent balances reflected real nonpayment and which stemmed from faulty equipment or billing mistakes. Houston Public Works has also faced separate allegations that employees used city-issued purchasing cards to buy tools and resell them, adding to scrutiny of the department's internal controls during the same period.

With the freeze ending, the city is now moving to collect on debts it says have accumulated for too long. Customers who receive a notice and remain unpaid past the deadline could see their water disconnected starting September 8. Houston Public Works has not detailed exactly how disconnections will be sequenced among the 15,000 flagged accounts, or what payment arrangements might allow customers to avoid a shutoff before that date.

Customers with balances above $500 that are at least 90 days old are being urged to contact Houston Water before September 8 to resolve their accounts or set up a plan, according to the department. The city has not said when it expects to resolve the mystery of the $3.5 million business account, which remains under investigation.