BROUSSARD (AP) — Broussard Mayor Charles Langlinais is disputing the $825,000 bill Lafayette Utilities System sent his municipality for water the city has consumed, but not purchased, for several years.

The Advertiser reports Langlinais disagrees with the method LUS officials use to calculate the bill’s amount, and he’s hired an outside consultant to re-calculate what the price tag should be.

LUS Director Terry Huval said on Tuesday that he’s open to discussing that consultant’s findings. Those calculations, however, likely won’t come until after the due date on the invoice, and Huval said Langlinais “needs to pay the bill first” in order to open the door for discussions about reducing the price tag.

“As things stand now, the only estimate we have is the one we’ve assembled, and that’s what the invoice is for,” Huval said. “The contract requires that they pay us, and we expect full payment for the amount on the invoice.”

When LUS officials noticed the problem nearly two months ago, they quickly re-routed the water from the bypass line back through the metered line it should have been using, Huval said.

LUS has been monitoring that line since then, and Huval said based on usage during that time — 8.5 million gallons of water per month — his office calculated the $825,587.01 bill.

Langlinais, however, said this calculation is “obviously” incorrect.

Langlinais said a smaller amount of water would have flowed through that bypass line during the “first two to three years as compared to the last few years” because “there has been very little development along that stretch of Albertson Parkway until recently.”

Huval admitted the “straight-line calculation,” which assumes Broussard used 8.5 million gallons of water each month the bypass line was in use, could over estimate the actual amount used in some months. At the same time though, Broussard could also have used more than that amount during some months, leaving the estimate on the low end.

“We planned to sum the total usage of all the water meters on the LUS supplied lines and the amount passing through the two other Lafayette meter installations which had working meters,” Langlinais said in the letter.