If your refrigerator conks out just after the warranty expires, too bad for you. Your choice is to spend money on repairs or spend money on a new one. Neither the appliance store nor the manufacturer is likely to be responsible.

Homeowners in Ewa Beach are caught in a similar too-bad-for-you situation, but with far higher stakes. In their case someone should take responsibility.

Somewhere beneath the roads in their area, pipes are leaking water at an eye-popping 500,000 gallons per day, on average. More than 100 million gallons could have been wasted in a year.

The 612 two-story, single-family houses were sold between 2000 and 2004 in complexes that bear the names Terrazza, CorteBella, Las Brisas and Tiburon. Upkeep of roads and underground utilities is normally a function of the city, but in this case a homeowners association that governs all four complexes handles this task, as it would for, say, a condominium.

Homeowners cover their water bills through maintenance fees paid to the association. This means they are all holding the bag for fixing the underground leak, or leaks. Estimated cost of repairs: $5 million, about $8,200 per home.

The homes were built and the pipes put in by Gentry Homes Ltd., which says the 10-year warranty on its work has long expired. The company says it used materials approved by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply and stands behind its construction quality. It declined responsibility, but did offer to connect the homeowners with professionals who could help.

Although not technically liable, Gentry owes these residents more. It needn’t bear the full repair burden, but as a company with a stake in continued homebuilding in Hawaii, it does have an interest in figuring out what went wrong, whether it was materials, construction, something in the soil, whatever.

Obviously, this should not have happened. It’s not normal wear and tear, or it would be happening all over the island. And it can’t be the fault of the end user — to go back to the refrigerator analogy, it’s not like failure could have been averted by brushing dirt off the cooling coils more often. At best, their association could have caught the problem sooner by more closely monitoring water use.

A little help, Gentry. With your expertise and knowledge of how this housing area was built, you could expedite a solution.