Greater Cincinnati Water Works’ billing system down

CINCINNATI (WXIX) - The billing system used by Greater Cincinnati Water Works customers is currently down.

The outage affects customers’ ability to pay their water and sewer bills. Payments can’t be taken over the phone or through GCWW’s customer portal, nor can payments mailed in or dropped off be processed into the system.

It isn’t clear customers have any way to pay their bill at all while the outage is in effect.

GCWW will not charge fees or shut off water service due to nonpayment.

The GCWW customer service phone line (513.591.7700) is currently limited to water emergencies including main breaks, private water line leaks and restoration of water service.

Neither water service nor water quality are impacted. The water itself is safe, and customers can continue to use water and sewer services as normal, according to a city memo.

The outage also impacts GCWW’s ability to schedule meter readings, unit replacements, turn-off requests for customers going on vacation or other non-emergency work orders.

All appointments with customers to service meters scheduled for March 22 are canceled.

Cincinnati interim City Manager John Curp sent word of the outage in a memo Monday. The memo was posted to the city website Tuesday.

The issue, according to the memo, is with an external vendor contracted by GCWW to provide the billing system. The billing system was taken offline “immediately” as a precaution, though the memo does not provide a timeline.

Customers can send an email to help@mygcww.org with any questions.

GCWW is municipally owned and operated.

The public utility supplies more than 43-billion gallons of water a year through 3,100 miles of water mains to about 240,000 residential and commercial accounts, representing more than 1.1 million customers, according to the city website.

GCWW service area has grown to include the entire City of Cincinnati, most of Hamilton County and parts of Butler and Warren Counties in Ohio.

In 2003, GCWW started selling water to Boone County and Florence, Kentucky via a pipeline installed under the Ohio River.

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