When Greenville Municipal Authority Board President Dick Miller reviewed customer complaints for recent months, he saw an overwhelming pattern: high water bills.

Those high, sometimes astronomical, bills weren't due to higher rates. The majority of them, Miller said Tuesday, were caused by estimated meter reading over an extended period of time. When authority employees finally got inside residences to read meters, it turned out the customers had been paying far less than they owed for a long time.

The bills quickly add up, Miller said.

"These people are not making themselves available during the meter reading," Miller said, "and then, when the readers leave a card for them to fill out their readings, they are not sending the card back in."