AFAIK the answer to the "Re: Is "Scaling Engineer" a new job title?" is yes

I lived in an Aimco properety and have been disputing thier bills for 2 years. My daughters room where the meter was, was also a fire hazard. One bedroom apartment not even 700 square feet and they tried to bill me almost 300.00. Called the EPA, the governer, weights and measures, the fbi,lawyers duke energy and nobody will help me. There is no jurisdiction. After requesting all bills from Ista, I was given notice to leave 2 days later. The building inspector was disgusted by the HVAC unit and still I am fighting to see what I can do about it. BBB closed case yesterday , lack of response from AIMCO/. Ista sent me something, but of course it listed no rates and now they are telling me i also paid for everyones heat because the heaters constantly run in the winter even though i turned my furnace off. I was also harrassed by the landlord before moving out who lived next door, and all the nieghbors quit talking to me because they were afraid they would be asked to leave as well. I was ioncredibly stressed before moving out due to everything that happebned and would really love it if a lawyer were to read this and be interested. Good person seeking justice.

Has anyone ever tried contesting apartment owners using Ratio Allocation Billing Systems (RUBS) and third party billing services for illegally selling drinking water to the public because they bill tenants separately for water without submetering? My research indicates that it is a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Section 1411 and an EPA memorandum/ruling on the subject in Dec. 2003. I live in Georgia, where the the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) has primacy and is failing to enforce the law. No other state agency regulates apartment owners or the sale of water, not even the Public Service Commission. There is absolutely no oversight. So far, my lawyers like the case and are still researching it and hope to file a class action lawsuit on a contingency basis. The law firm specializes in environmentsl law and the lead attorney used to work for the EPA. A current EPA attorney told me I was right. The head of the EPA Region IV water office in Atlanta said I was right, until he found out a few days later that I was intending to file a complaint against all my landlord's 77 apartment complexes in 10 states, which caused him to choke and got his sphincter puckered up.

In 2000, Georgia passed a law, OGCA 12-5-180.1, making it legal for apartment owners to bill tenants separately for water/sewer using either submetering or RUBS and not be considered to be operating a public water system. Two years later, in 2002, Georgia deleted the language that said apartment owners using such billing methods wouldn't be considered public water systems, in order to comply with the superceding federal code and the SDWA. However, the Georgia EPD never changed their enforcement policy one iota.

I and all the other tenants where I live are infuriated by the deceptive tactics of the landlord and the doubling of water/sewer bills in a year since the new owner took over the property and contracted with National Water and Power as the third party billing service. Tenants in one bedroom apartments are paying far in excess of single family home owners in the area and some families in a two bedroom unit are paying over $100/month. The landlord is abusing the tenants with common area water usage, like filling the swimming pool with 35,000 gallons of water and illegally using the sprinkler system for 22 days during a ban on outdoor water usage and billing tenants for it. I reported the water ban violation and got their irrigation line shut off and locked during our level 4 drought condition. If I am successful with the lawsuit against the landlord's six Georgia properties, all of which do the same thing and use unfair business practices, it will set a precedent and lawsuits will surely follow all over the country.

I am also working on stopping the landlord from playing big brother and controlling who we can get other utilities from, like contracting for natural gas as a sole provider on the property, while making an additional profit at the expense of the tenants. Comments are welcome. Highly POed