By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

If Allen Townsend were the type of guy who wore sweatshirts, his would probably have a big D across the front for Dade County. His late father, J.M.C. “Red” Townsend, was as close to being Dade’s patron saint as is feasible in these secular times, and after a lifetime in Atlanta the younger Townsend moved here himself in 2000 with a sense of coming home, telling the Sentinel in a 2010 interview, “It’s great to be in the place where you belong to be.”

Which is why the air seemed to crackle with irony on Friday as Townsend faced down the Dade County Water Authority, threatening to sue.

“I’m not asking for help. I’m asking for justice,” Townsend told the January meeting of the Authority’s board of directors.

At issue is a $1,434.10 water bill from April of 2011 that resulted from a leak. Both sides agree that the leak was in a fitting on Town-send’s side of the meter, which means it was his responsibility to maintain and his liability when it broke.

But Townsend contends the leak had to have been present when a water company employee read the meter shortly before he noticed it himself and had the faulty fitting replaced, and he also questions the amount of water the meter registered during the scant 11 days between the meter reading and the repair.        

The water company has proposed splitting the bill with Townsend but he rejected the offer. “I don’t feel like I’m half wrong,” he said.

Townsend’s counteroffer was $250, which he says is what it would cost him to file a civil suit. “I just feel like it would be unfair for me to pay that, and I’d be willing to go to court,” he told the water board, which is chaired by Dade County Executive Ted Rumley.

But at the Friday meeting, Rumley and the other board members seemed disinclined to back down. “If you want to challenge us, we’ll go for it,” said Rumley.

By way of background, Allen Townsend’s father, “Red” Townsend, was the influential judge and Georgia politician who put “the Independent State of Dade” on the map in 1945 by engineering its official reentry into the United States – legend had it Dade had never joined back up after the Civil War.

But in a burst of patriotism at the end of World War II, return Dade did, amid as much fanfare as the well-connected elder Townsend could muster. Bands played, the judge spoke stirringly, and citizens gave a resounding aye vote to repatriation in front of the courthouse. The whole show was broadcast nationally via radio, and President Harry S. Truman even sent a telegram welcoming Dade home.

More substantively, Red Townsend had just five years before that pulled strings to get the Ed Rivers Memorial Highway – later called Highway 136 – built over Lookout Mountain, thus connecting Dade with the rest of Georgia in a less splashy but more solid and geographical sense.

Allen Townsend, one of the judge’s two sons, grew up mostly in Atlanta, where his father served on the Georgia Court of Appeals. 

But it had always been impressed upon the younger Townsend that Dade was his own and native land.  He registered for the draft here, returned here to vote, and in 2000 finally gave in to the call of home and moved to Wildwood for good. 

Townsend, who became an attorney like his father, did not give up his legal career when he moved to Dade but can still be seen from time to time plying his trade in the local courts – and his appearance before the water board Friday morning was distinctly lawyerly as he passed around photographs and presented the cracked pipe fitting as evidence.   

Townsend told the water board that when his meter was read on March 21, 2011, the reading already showed twice the amount of water usage as was normal for his household. 

Then, on April 1, he happened to glance at the meter while on an unrelated home maintenance chore nearby, said Townsend. “I noticed that water was seeping out from under the lid of the bucket that holds the meter,” he said. “I knew immediately that there was a leak somewhere down there.”  

When he lifted the lid, water was swirling around, obscuring the meter, he said. He called the water company, the water was cut off, and Townsend found a plumber to locate the leak and fix it that same evening.

Townsend told the board that, given the already double meter reading on March 21, plus the dramatic appearance of the meter when he looked at it himself, it should have been apparent to the water company employee that something was wrong. “The fellow that read it should have reported it was leaking,” he said.

And he questioned how between then and April 1, when the water was cut off, the tiny crack in his fitting could have leaked enough water to fill three swimming pools. “I don’t believe there was 380,000 gallons that leaked in 11 days,” he said. “That’s just an awful lot of water.” 

Finally, he wondered about the significance of the brand-new meter installed at his house on April 9, shortly after he met with water company manager Doug Anderton. “It seemed an unusual coincidence to me,” he said.

But water board members told Townsend they did not see how they could vary their rules in his case. “I want to treat everybody in the county fairly, be it you or somebody in a trailer on the side of Sand Mountain that can’t pay the bill,” said member Eddie Cantrell.

Cantrell said the water board’s offer to pay half was more than fair. “I think the just result is you pay it all,” he said. “I’m not an attorney, but I think it’s more a policy of kindness.”

The board’s consulting engineer, Bobby Nolen, said he would do a calculation when he got back to his office, but that the leak amounted to a not-untoward 20 gallons a minute.

And Nolen doubted whether the old meter had much to do with the swollen bill. “Typically, when a meter goes bad, it under-registers,” he said.

The water board was not without legal representation of its own, if only unofficially: Member Dennis Watson is also an attorney. He told Townsend there was no implication that he had done anything wrong, but: “The issue is, who’s got to pay for it,” he said. “The valve busted on your side of the water meter.”

Water company manager Anderton was not present Friday but his office manager, Sherri Walker, said that historically other water customers have been in the same boat as Townsend, some to the tune of several thousand dollars, and have taken advantage of the utility’s policy of splitting the bill.

Ted Rumley said he would arrange an interview with the meter reader, and that the matter would be further discussed this week.