To put this in perspective, an Olympic sized swimming pool is 804,836 gallons (assuming 8ft depth). 29 million gallons is 36 optic sized swimming pools.

the county’s water system director, Vanessa Tigert, attributed the oversight to a procedural error during the county’s transition to a cloud-based metering system.

[…] QTS and the county disagreed on how long the water went unmetered, with Tigert estimating about four months and QTS saying 9 to 15 months. Despite the unauthorized connections, Fayette County opted not to fine the company. “They’re our largest customer, and we have to be partners,” Tigert said. “It’s called customer service.”

What a crook

To me, the very idea that someone could steal water in such amounts is mindboogling.

Here, we have metering for each connection, and, on top of this, metering at key nodes all over the grid. Not to catch someone watering their lawn unmetered, but to watch for leaks. Water is considered important, so the utilities have strict monitoring requirements. If the measurements don’t add up in a segment, the utilities immediately start to investigate, as any leak that lets water out could also let dirt in - an absolute no-go here.

They would have caught the culprits after the first few cubic meters.