A Tampa woman faces a $15,000 water bill. Is her old oak to blame?

TAMPA — Cheryll Jenkins walked toward her mailbox, worried about what was waiting for her inside. She stepped carefully, watching out for exposed tree roots and a chunk of sidewalk those roots had upended. The branches of an old live oak stretched overhead.

In recent months, her water bill had skyrocketed. Then, in early July, the city shut off her service for nonpayment. An inspector later located a leak by the tree on her property, the water gushing out underground.

She reached inside the mailbox and pulled out an envelope. Inside was her latest bill from the city. She owed $14,954.24.

“What am I going to do?” Jenkins, 55, said last week outside the Old Seminole Heights home she shares with her daughter and two grandchildren.

As of Friday, officials weren’t ready to blame Jenkins’ tree. “The city has not yet found any evidence after today’s site inspection that there is a leak definitively connected to the tree roots,” water department spokesperson Ileana Hernandez told the Tampa Bay Times. Additional site investigations are required, she added.

Jenkins has long marveled at her tree’s sprawling canopy, grateful for the shade it provided from the baking Florida sun. The oak is 70 years old, according to city estimates.

Across Tampa, trees have been a casualty to the city’s warp-speed growth. According to a 2021 study, tree canopy coverage in Tampa is at its lowest in 26 years. Lower-income neighborhoods tend to have the scantest tree canopy, meaning those communities shoulder uneven public health consequences as a result.

But Jenkins became nervous as the tree grew and grew. What if a branch lands on my home during a hurricane? What if it becomes further entangled in the nearby utility pole? What if the sidewalk cracks continue to widen?

Roots rising from the dirt punctured car tires, she said. “This is going to really damage something, sooner or later,” she thought.

For years, she says, she’s been calling the city with concerns about the oak, worried it was wreaking havoc underground.

Each time — most recently in January, Jenkins says — she was told there was nothing to be done. Oaks of this age and size are protected. Both pruning and removal requires a permit. Jenkins says she was told her applications wouldn’t be approved, so she never filed.

Even before the leak, Jenkins was struggling to pay her bill, typically about $120 a month.

Water consumption for the address began to spike last September, according to city data. Since then, the city has waived six months of late fees. About $290 of the unpaid bill is in accumulated late fees, the city said.

In early July, Jenkins found a red notice on her door: “ATTENTION TAMPA UTILITIES CUSTOMER!”

Her water service was cut off. Her unpaid bill had ballooned to $13,823.47.

“How am I supposed to pay that?” said Jenkins, who cobbles together work as a cleaner and construction laborer and also sells second-hand goods. She scraped together slim savings and donations from family members to pay the city $600 to temporarily restore her service, she said.

She began turning the water on for only limited chunks of the day, hoping to stop the flow. She was storing full buckets on her countertop to be able to flush the toilet and cook later on. But whenever she’d turn her water back on, even only briefly, water would gush and her bill would jump once more.

A few days later, a city technician came to inspect.

“Active leak under or near oak tree,” they wrote on a report reviewed by the Times. “There are oak tree roots in front, behind and (on) both sides of meter box.”

The technician, according to the report, was unable to find the home’s water shut-off valve, the device used to control the flow of water.

Relocating the water meter box away from the tangle of roots, the technician wrote, might be the only solution.

To move the meter, Jenkins says she was told she’d have to pay a $50 application fee, then anywhere up from $250 for the relocation. Then she’d have to pay to connect her home to the meter, which can cost thousands.

Contacted by the Times on Friday, a city spokesperson said staff had “been working closely with the customer for some time” to resolve the issue. Jenkins might be eligible for a bill adjustment, though the likelihood remains unclear.

The three-bedroom bungalow with cream-colored siding, built in 1994, has been in her family for almost three decades, purchased by her mother and part of her estate. Now Jenkins worries her family might lose it.

For the time being, she’s keeping the water off, sleeping at her daughter’s home in New Tampa, three adults and five kids bundled into the house.

She’s been calling plumbers across the city, asking if they can help pro bono. So far, no luck.

Standing on the cracked sidewalk last week, she sighed. She looked down at the water meter and up at the tree. Then she walked back into her home, bill in hand.