On the path to self-sustainability, JXN Water is hitting the gas on its water bill collections

The prospect of Jackson again having its own, self-sustaining water system rests on its residents and their pocketbooks. 

While the city is expected to receive around $800 million in federal funds for its water repairs, JXN Water head Ted Henifin knows that the money will one day dry out. So far, the utility has already spent about $100 million of that money, mainly on water line repairs ($45 million) and a contract to staff its treatment plants ($39 million), according to JXN Water’s last quarterly report.  

Aisha Carson, lead communications officer at Jxn Water, gives a presentation during a Jackson utilities community meeting at the Mississippi E-Center at JSU in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

The goal, Henifin told Mississippi Today in an interview, is to get the water system’s finances to a point where it can pay for itself by 2029. Once the system is turning over consistent revenue, the city could supposedly take back control of its infrastructure, although state lawmakers may have something to say about it. Moreover, Jackson needs the revenue to pour into its broken sewer system, which has for years plagued the neighboring Pearl River with its pollution. But in order to get there, how well the city collects revenue and what citizens are paying has to drastically change.

The latest water bill collection rate from July was 73%, although the number’s fluctuated between the 50s and 70s over the last nine months. To reach the 2029 goal, Henifin said, they’ll need to reach 80% by next year and 90% by 2026. 

“Our team’s feeling the pressure,” Henifin said. “It’s basically this (question of), how fast can we ramp this up without stumbling along the way.”

Trying to fill that gap, JXN Water first sent out warning letters about shutoffs last fall, and then began disconnecting non-paying customers over the last few months. The utility has primarily cut off water to homes getting service that don’t have accounts, meaning they aren’t receiving bills. Henifin said it’s typically taken about one to two days to reconnect a home’s service after shutting it off. 

JXN Water recently estimated there were about 1,500 of those cases, and that after shutting off about 600 of those connections roughly 500 of them have since made accounts. Henifin said there are a number of reasons why someone might be in that situation, such as if someone moves into a place where the last account was closed but the utility never shut the service off. 

Henifin believes another large chunk of properties are getting water for free. After working with an accounting firm to go over the city’s parcel data, Henifin said they found 5,000 to 7,000 properties that have addresses and get electricity but don’t have water meters, meaning JXN Water can’t tell if they’re using water. 

“They’ve got an Entergy account, it’s a house that exists as a parcel in the city, and there’s no corresponding water account,” Henifin said. “There’s no meter, there’s nothing. So, it’s like, hmm, how are they living there without any water? So we still got to get to all those.”  

JXN Water has also zeroed in on multifamily homes like apartment complexes with large outstanding debts. Henifin said they’ve disconnected water to about 10 complexes, but that their owners quickly made payments and had their water restored. 

In Jackson, 51% of the city’s homes are occupied by renters, according to Census data. Rep. Ronnie Crudup, D-Jackson, said out-of-state landlords that aren’t keeping up with their properties, including the ones who had their water disconnected, are a known issue in the city.

“The sad part about it is the apartment complex, a lot of times they’re collecting the fees from the tenants but they just haven’t done their part,” Crudup said. “There’s been a lot of absentee landlords who are not taking very good care of their property. We’ve dealt with a lot of that in the city.”

Ashley Richardson, the director of Housing Law for the Mississippi Center for Justice, said it’s often convenient for tenants to have their utilities included in their rent. But with factors like absentee landlords, she encourages renters to put their utilities in their own names whenever possible. 

“It is disheartening that the company is not taking the money that the clients are paying to pay their water bills,” she said. “The tenants are the ones reaping the consequences of the actions of the management company.”

Richardson added, if renters go without water for extended periods because their landlords didn’t pay their bills, they can reach out to her office at MCJ to learn about breaking their lease. 

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, left, listens as Ted Henifin speaks during a press conference at City Hall in Jackson, Miss., Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. Henifin was appointed as Jackson's water system's third-party administrator. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Henifin acknowledged the impacts those shutoffs have on low-income renters, but he highlighted the large sums of money – over $400,000 in a couple cases – that the complexes’ owners owed. He added that JXN Water tried to give tenants there fair warning before shutting the water off.

“These big out-of-state conglomerates that are owning these real estate trusts or whatever across the country don't seem to have any conscience about their tenants and the challenges they create,” Henifin said. 

Not only is JXN Water trying to boost the city’s water revenue, it’s trying to do so under a new billing structure that went into effect in February. When he introduced the new model at the end of last year, Henifin explained that the utility needed to increase rates on bills (which are now around $76 a month on average, or about $10 higher than before) to have enough money to put back into maintaining and upgrading its infrastructure. 

To counter the rate hike, the model also included a discount for SNAP recipients (about 30% off for most), which would’ve been the first of its kind in the country. The idea was to ease the burden on low-income families in a city where one in four live in poverty, which is twice the national level. 

However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the benefits program, and the state attorney general are appealing a court order requiring the release of SNAP data, arguing JXN Water shouldn’t have access to that personal information. While recipients can still contact JXN Water to get the discount, Henifin said less than 10 people (of the roughly 6,000 eligible accounts in the city) have done so. 

One recipient who spoke to Mississippi Today, Gabrielle McLaurin, said she didn’t know whether the SNAP discount ever went into effect and never reached out to JXN Water to ask.

“It would apply to me, and that’s the thing, I hadn’t said anything because I know they’re in a legal battle right now,” McLaurin said. 

In a survey Mississippi Today put out in August, most residents who responded said they haven’t had any issues with the new billing system, and many applauded the work JXN Water is doing. 

Ranjan Batra, a Jackson resident of 25 years, said he’s been really pleased with JXN Water’s service, and that he was dreading control of the system going back to the city.

JXN Water crews making repairs to the city's water distribution system. Credit: JXN Water

“There was a sewage leak in our backyard that had been going for probably eight or nine years, and (JXN Water) fixed that,” Batra said. “The only way to fix that stuff is to have the money to fix it.”

Batra’s experience lines up with the results of  a “trust survey” that JXN Water has conducted over the last year or so, talking to over 2,000 Jackson residents. In the spring of 2023, the survey found that only 29% trusted the utility. But a year later, that number nearly doubled, reaching 56%. 

McLaurin and others, though, talked about their lingering issues with their bills. She said that sometime around the COVID-19 pandemic, after not getting a bill for over a year, she received a new balance of over $2,000, despite having made payments in the meantime. McLaurin, who lives with her three children, doesn’t know where the $2,000 came from, although suspects some of it may be from her home’s previous occupant. 

After using public assistance offered through the city, she got the balance cut in half. Now, though, she said JXN Water put her on a payment plan requiring her to pay $175 a month, in addition to the $130 in new charges that she sees. 

“I don’t see how I’ll ever be able to cure this balance,” said McLaurin, who works as a volunteer coordinator for a hospice company.

A seemingly prominent issue for Jacksonians are leaks on their property that result in enormously higher water bills. JXN Water Communications Officer Aisha Carson said that, as of Aug. 27, there were 2,722 “leak or burst codes” coming from residents’ meters around the city. She explained that the new meters they’re installing around the city can detect if water usage is going up because of a leak in a home’s plumbing. 

During a community meeting to discuss utility issues on Tuesday, Carson told residents that JXN Water would adjust residents’ bills when that happens, bringing the price down to what they typically owed before the leak happened. 

A couple of people at the meeting, south Jackson residents Ruth Jumper and Shirley Harrington, both talked about the abnormally high bills they’d received, and that in each case JXN Water told them they had leaks on their property.

Ruth Jumper looking over water bills at her home in south Jackson on Aug. 29, 2024.

Harrington, for instance, said she got a bill in June for $7,400. After JXN Water told her that the amount was due to a leak, she said she hired a plumber who couldn’t find the issue. Later, she said JXN Water left a note on her door saying that the leak was resolved, and the utility adjusted her bill back to its normal amount. 

“When I got (the bill), it blew my mind,” said Harrington, who lives by herself and says her usual monthly balance is about $130. “I was like where did this come from? And their explanation was, ‘You’ve had a leak ever since October last year.’ Nobody told me I had a leak, and I’ve been paying my bill.”

Jumper, like Harrington, said JXN Water told her she had a leak on her property, inflating the consumption shown on her water bill. Jumper showed Mississippi Today a note, dated July 10, that she said the utility left on her door saying there was no issue. But as far as she was aware, no one had been by to fix a leak. Whatever had happened, her bill for July showed a dramatic 75% decrease in her consumption. The utility also told Jumper it would adjust her bill back to its normal amount, she said. 

Carson later talked about why some residents aren't seeing the leaks the meters are picking up.

"Leaks can be complicated, such as slab/foundation leaks or lateral line collapses, which are not always obvious," she said in an email. "While JXN Water is not responsible for leaks on private property, we can send a crew to investigate and confirm if the leak is on the customer’s side of the property line... Once the leak is fixed, customers can request a billing adjustment, and their meter will no longer generate high usage readings, resolving the issue."

A note that Ruth Jumper said JXN Water left on her door.

Another point of contention among residents has been a $40 “availability” fee that came with the new billing structure. Both the old and new structures charge customers in two ways: a fixed fee, as well as a variable cost based on consumption. The old fixed fee was much lower, at $11 a month. 

But, Henifin pointed out, the new variable rate for water and sewer combined has gone down, going from $9 per hundred cubic feet, or CCF, to $6. The change, he explained, reflects that most of the cost of delivering water comes from the infrastructure, rather than how much a person consumes. 

“If everyone in the city didn't use water today, those fixed costs would still be there, so we need to collect revenue to pay for that,” he said.

While JXN Water is more aggressively pushing customers to catch up on their bills, it’s also let go of a large chunk of past debt. When the utility took over, according to its quarterly report, it inherited $56 million in water bill arrearages. But a majority of that debt is disputed, the report says, and the cost of recovering that money would outweigh what the utility collects. JXN Water is nearly finished installing new meters to all of its customers, but Jacksonians for years dealt with unreliable billing thanks to faulty meters that the city received through a contract with Siemens. 

Crudup, the lawmaker whose district includes south Jackson, said the $40 charge has been the main subject of concern he’s heard from his constituents. Otherwise, he says, the new billing model seems to be going smoothly, especially compared to the last decade of what Jackson has dealt with. 

The city began its water metering contract with Siemens back in 2013, but as early as the following year residents and officials suspected faulty numbers in their water bills. 

“For so long, Jackson was on sort of a moratorium on paying water bills, and there were certain people, and probably even businesses who probably saw paying the water bill as sort of optional,” Crudup said. “Jackson residents have gone so long, I would say probably the last seven to 10 years without paying pretty consistently.”

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