Regime payment and city water supply

Good afternoon all,

This is a rehash of a post I was able to find from about 3 years ago. Sorry for the duplication, but I need help and that post ended without a true conclusion. I am president of a board for a 160 condo complex in South Carolina and at my wits end.

The issue at hand is we have an owner who is about $5900 behind in regime fees. It has been about 3 years since her last payment. She has rented the unit for about 2 year! We as a community we are paying for her water use as we are a renovated apartment complex with only one meter. We have a lien and she is in foreclosure with her bank. Our fingers crossed we will get the owed money upon final foreclosure and judgment against her, but we could end up getting nothing.

I have sought legal help, but our lawyer says, we can not prevent access to utilites per SC law. I think this has more to do with us removing services that she would be paying for, such as if we decided she is not paying her regime so we went and removed the electrical box as it is on common property and she was without electricy. But I feel the water is a different issue all together.

I purpose a couple of solution to the board - one would be to cut off her water and see what would happen in court. After all if she was having to pay for her water from the city they would cut it off years ago. Another option is to get a plumber and set up a meter for her to pay her bill (or not) directly to the city for the water she has used.

Any other ideas or thoughts. I am disperate and would love to end this nightmare.

Thanks.

Water is a utility.

If your going to split out meters, you need to do it for the entire complex and not just one lot.