Report: California Homeowner Dubbed 'Wet Prince of Bel Air' Used 11.8M Gallons of Water in 1 Year
That's enough water to flush a toilet nonstop for an entire year.
— -- A homeowner in Los Angeles, dubbed the "Wet Prince of Bel Air" for reportedly using 11.8 million gallons of water last year during California's drought, remains unidentified by authorities, but the Center of Investigative Reporting has narrowed the list of possible perpetrators to seven.
Senior news applications developer Michael Corey and senior reporter Lance Williams of the Center of Investigative Reporting released details on the possible water-wasting culprits in Los Angeles based on satellite images, an algorithm developed to track drought and deforestation and equations used in landscape planning.
The report estimates were not precise enough to pinpoint one home but narrowed the extreme water users down to the Bel Air neighborhood, which has some of the city's wealthiest people living in some of its most expensive homes.
Corey and Williams said they were essentially looking for "the greenest and wettest yard."
One home in question, owned by a retired broadcast CEO with a 6 acre yard, showed possible usage from April 2013 to April 2015 equivalent to flushing a toilet repeatedly day and night for an entire year.
"This much waste has got to be mostly landscaping," Corey told ABC News.
Other possible offending homes belong to a retail heiress and a soap opera producer, both of whom gave no comment to ABC News.
A well-known hotelier, a telecom mogul and a onetime studio boss all told ABC News they have cut back on water and taken steps to dramatically reduce usage since the issue was brought to their attention.
The investigative duo reached out to one of the homeowners, Williams said, and "he didn't water his yard so much" after they contacted him.
"His yard started getting brown," Corey said.
Under California law, overhydration is not a crime as long as payment is made for the water used.
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