This is part one of a two-part interview with Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba and Interim Third Party Manager Ted Henifin. Read the interview with Ted Henifin here.
Two years ago, the Jackson water system collapsed. The city’s main water plant was falling apart, burdened with a distribution system that leaked far more water than it delivered and a dwindling staff incapable of managing the sprawling complex of purification systems.
In the months that followed, intervention on the part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice led to the creation of a federal team later named JXN Water. Ted Henifin, formerly the chief executive of a large wastewater treatment agency in Virginia, leads that team. His job has been to take over and manage the water system—and later the sewage system as well—to return it to solvency and functionality under the monitoring of a federal court.
For a time, Henifin and Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba appeared in public as close partners, sharing joint press conferences where they updated an anxious city on plans to mend the Jackson water crisis once and for all. With the late December 2022 announcement of $650 million in federal funds purely for Jackson’s water system, a positive path forward seemed well within reach.
But within the year, fractures in the relationship gave way to open hostility. At status conferences, Lumumba and Henifin battled over competing strategies for winning back the trust of the public in Jackson’s water. Public advocacy groups, including some associated with the mayor, accused Henifin of insufficient public engagement—a charge Lumumba has since repeated.
On March 27 of this year, Lumumba attempted to address his concerns with the EPA directly, writing a letter to EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan that laid out a laundry list of concerns about JXN Water and Ted Henifin.
Lumumba accused Henifin of failing to pursue appropriately competitive contracts for the operation of the city’s water plants, undocumented delays to key priority projects, poor communication with the city, improper financial planning and a failure to maintain neutrality in the case of legislative initiatives to wrest control of the Jackson water system away from the city.
“What I am saying is this,” Lumumba told this reporter, “how dare you endorse a plan that you hadn’t even discussed with the residents of Jackson, that you hadn’t even discussed with the city … who has the greatest interest in the success of the system, right?
Henifin, for his part, rejected the mayor’s accusations and said he was working in the ultimate interests of the city and its residents. “Do I have a role in this? Absolutely,” he said. “The (DOJ order regarding the water system) is not over until the judge says it’s over, and it’s clear that the judge wants financial stability, viability and sustainability going forward.”
The EPA response one month later was breezy and noncommittal, highlighting work that JXN Water had accomplished.
In June, the Mississippi Free Press sat down with both Mayor Lumumba and Interim Third Party Manager Ted Henifin to discuss the collapse of their relationship, their ongoing points of contention, and what the future of the Jackson water system might look like.
The following interview with Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba has been edited and condensed for context and clarity.
Nick Judin: In your letter to the EPA, you wrote that JXN Water has failed to initiate competitive procurement processes—that in all the city’s direct engagement with JXN Water, they provided no evidence whatsoever of any procurement process—they just went straight to (Jacobs Solutions, one of the largest technical professional services firms in the U.S.).
Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba: The third-party manager’s defense of that has been that the order allows him to not have to go through the traditional procurement practices that cities have to go through.
But it does outline that he has a responsibility—and there is always the responsibility, anytime you’re dealing with public funds, especially federal dollars—that you should be looking for competitive bids.
When we consider the financial condition of JXN Water—that they repeatedly have not only asked the city to take out a loan to help cover some of their operation costs, which the city is not inclined to do—they would be better positioned if they were getting competitive pricing or competitive bids for the work that is to be accomplished.
I believe that any resident would be sad to learn that any entity, whether it be the city or the federal government, is not exploring competitive bids in order to ensure that not only that you get good work, but you get good work for the absolute best price for the community.
The hope was obviously that the investment would come into the local community. But what were the local firms that you felt could have provided a competitive bid to handle this project?
Well, you know, I want to steer away from naming a particular firm because it would demonstrate a bias of mine if I started naming—
Okay, but even without naming a specific firm—
First of all, the work is abundant, and I’m not saying that everything has to be done by Jackson firms.
I’m not trying to be hypocritical and act like we’ve only engaged local firms with the City of Jackson. But because the work is so abundant—we’re pushing against the clock in order to aggressively meet not only priority projects but things that haven’t been done for decades, for generations at this point.
There is enough that you can break apart the work to ensure that both local firms or the firms that may not be local are best positioned to do the work and ensure a competitive process in all of that work. We know that weatherization needs to be done. We know that we have more than 50% loss in our distribution system, right?
That 50% loss means that pipes need to be dug up and that work needs to be accomplished. Now, there have been some Jackson firms to do some of that work, but I think we can go a step further. And if we’re truly looking at how this is to be done in the most optimal way possible, then we have to turn our crumbling infrastructure into an economic frontier.
We have to ensure that this historic investment that is taking place in Jackson not only leads to a sustainable, equitable and dependable water system, but also leads to revenue and the ability for those funds to regenerate through our community for several years.
That can happen if there’s intentionality around that. And right now there is no intentionality around that. I’m hearing from the local firms saying that he refuses to engage them. I’m hearing from a number of people across the country that are expressing concern in the way in which he is not engaging in a competitive procurement process.
You don’t want to name specific names, but Jackson has gone through a (request for proposals) for these operational projects. I would assume Jackson received some proposals in that process.
We received some proposals in that process. First and foremost, we went through our due diligence to not just select someone and choose to give them some outlandish price.
The reason that we didn’t get into a third-party operations agreement is because we were waiting on submissions in terms of what the cost would be so that we could make certain that we were being diligent in how we were spending the public funds.
When it got to the point where we were waiting on that and we had a meeting and they told us that they would deliver that, we were then told that the State of Mississippi—I’ve yet to hear from certain state officials who was the person to redirect (that)—but according to one of our current operators who operates our wastewater treatment facility, they said that the State then got involved. And said that they would be taking over. That ended negotiations with the City of Jackson at that time.
So what I am expressing to you is that this whole critique of a need for an outside management firm in order to do the operations of our facility, which is, in my opinion, the most inefficient water treatment facility in the country.
Nick, you’ve heard me say this before, it’s the only plant that operates off of both a conventional processing system and membrane processing system that work in tandem with one another in order to purify and distribute our water, right? Which means that the level of expertise of an individual who knows both systems is very rare.
And even more rare in Mississippi because we’re one of two surface water systems in the entire State of Mississippi.
So, you know we identified that it was probably most advantageous for us to start looking for an outside, privatized company—not to privatize the water, right, but to do the operations.
But that’s only one part of the equation, right? The other part of the equation is dealing with the distribution system.
You highlight the lack of progress on priority projects, writing that “while JXN Water cites U.S. EPA-approved schedule extensions in its report, the City of Jackson has not received documentation of these approvals.” So to be clear, the City has requested evidence that extensions were offered on these projects, but neither the EPA nor JXN Water could provide that?
Not only does the City request evidence of the extensions being requested. The City wants just routine communication with Jackson going on, right? We do not receive routine communication.
I believe that one news agency referenced numerous scheduled meetings. But what he failed to mention was that there is a standing meeting that is supposed to be called with the City of Jackson with the public works director—in this instance, it would be (Chief Administrative Officer Louis Wright)—that were routinely canceled.
And he can’t point to the last time that he actually met with our CAO or representative of the city of Jackson. He will point to the general call that he has, that is for a number of organizations on Zoom and we’re just merely a guest on the call, right? Not in any position to ask questions, not in any position to get a true diagnosis of what’s going on and understand the progress that has happened. And I think it’s unfortunate for a number of reasons.
One, because it leaves the city in an incredibly uncomfortable position when residents want to know the status of their water system—when they want to know the improvements that are being made. We can’t communicate with them.
Or when they’re experiencing challenges. (JXN Water’s Interim Third Party Manager Ted Henifin) often talks about in his response to the EPA with regard to a number of priority projects, he talks about how Jackson residents are so excited that they just don’t make requests, right?
Well, that’s not what we’re hearing. That’s not what I heard at a council meeting just yesterday (on June 4, 2024).
When a resident at the end of the meeting comes to me and expresses that they don’t get any communication from JXN Water, when people are saying that they’re calling JXN Water and not getting any answer, or they’re being blown off—
The fact that there is no in-person communication customer service location that people can actually air their grievances or get some relative response to their challenges is in and of itself, you know, I don’t want to call it criminal, but it’s certainly not sensitive to what residents of Jackson have been experiencing.
In his response when the EPA is asking about boil-water notices and whether there have been alternative water plans that have been developed. You know, he responds by saying that they have not done so, one, because they have insufficient staff to do it, and then, two, Jackson residents are so pleased that they don’t complain about it and they don’t ask, right?
What is the basis of his determination that Jackson residents are so happy? And, and furthermore, the agreed stipulated order outlines that part of his responsibility is to provide alternative water plans, meaning bottled water distribution when boil-water notices happen.
My understanding was that the EPA relaxed that restriction because of the availability of bottled water.
The availability is in stores. And it may have been available at one point in time, right? But one, water expires. Two, they are not maintaining any stockpile of water. And we don’t even know if we’re getting clear communication on the number of boil-water notices that are actually happening.
(Henifin) reports to us that (the boil-water notices affect) but a few homes.
But we’re getting residents that seem to (suggest) far more than 10 houses as he suggests. There are far more individuals. I don’t know that our system has that level of specificity that we can denote that it’s only 10 houses.
Well, JXN Water has said that they’ve put something like 50 pressure monitors throughout the city. Have you seen any documentation—
We haven’t seen it. And once again, it would still be inconsistent with what we’re hearing from residents when these events occur.
The delayed projects you cite specifically are the 81 boil-water notices, 250 million gallons of raw sewage and delays to the OB Curtis corrosion control system in the last quarter. Those things have been the status quo in the Jackson water system going back almost a decade now. Of those issues, which specifically should JXN Water have addressed by this point?
First, let’s be clear that we’re not saying that the system was running optimally under the City of Jackson, right?
But there are reasons for that. One, we made it clear that we were woefully underfunded. We didn’t have the benefit of $600 to $800 million to deal with these challenges. We were dealing with them with an insufficient and constantly depleting enterprise fund. And we were still trying to do everything that we could with that.
$600 million doesn’t get you a brand-new, shiny system. But it is a sea change from where we were. So we’re not talking about apples to apples.
The other thing that we have to consider is that we were having to go through all of these requirements and reporting and explaining and issuing statements to the EPA and public notice of what was taking place.
And now there is a different standard being applied to JXN Water. When we had a reading of challenges within our system, and we had to issue a boil-water notice, then we had to go through several days of testing before we could lift the boil-water notice, and we had to respond and deal with that.
When JXN Water has— you know, we’ve never had E. coli under the City of Jackson.
Wasn’t there an E. coli reading in 2017?
I don’t believe so. We’ve never had that. I’m trying to think of what we had, I think it was a high concentration of…
Was it manganese?
It may have been manganese. E. coli is incredibly unique.
(Editor’s Note: Boil-water notices from the City of Jackson in the possession of MSDH did list a detection of E. coli in Jackson on Dec. 1, 2017 and a manganese warning for Aug. 2, 2017. Additionally, the Mississippi State Department of Health stated in a press release on Jan. 12, 2024, that, since 2003, “there have been 29 instances of E. coli detected in the City of Jackson’s water system.”)
E. coli is incredibly unique. And I’m not here to say that the (MSDH’s reading) was right or wrong. But I’m saying that it’s a different standard to just say that your reading is wrong and we don’t have to respond to you.
That’s not an option that we ever have—or for a court to then villainize the (Mississippi State) Department of Health, right? We’ve been criticized for everything that the Department of Health has dealt with the city of Jackson on, and in some regards rightfully so.
But it wasn’t because we lacked the desire. It wasn’t because we lacked the political will to do it. It’s because we lacked sufficient resources that we kept saying that we needed in order to deal with these challenges. And now, having those resources, going through extraordinary measures in order to get those resources in large part in place, and for these things to still be taking place is a disservice to the residents of Jackson.
To fail to communicate on a plan and simply have a reason for why you couldn’t be on time for things, that’s not sufficient.
Henifin told us that they were going to do 25 miles of pipe within the first year, right? Which did not happen. There were no efforts to move that forward. And so when the winter comes and we know that we have a particular strain on our distribution system in the winter, instead of acknowledging that we haven’t made as much progress as we would like to have made, but the progress is coming and the work is coming.
You tell the Jackson residents that you all filled your bathtubs up at the same time, and that caused too much strain on the system. And that’s why people have water pressure issues.
But after that water pressure event happened in the freeze, the recovery was quick. Comparing it to cold weather outages in previous years, do you think there’s been progress at all in the water system?
Yeah. I wouldn’t—first of all, this is not me raising issues to just have an issue with a person. I want success in the system. That is the only thing that I’m advocating for is success in the system. I’m not here to have political debates with anybody. I’m a thorn in (Henifin’s) side only for the point of ensuring that our Jackson residents have a dependable water system.
And I’ll be a thorn in anybody’s side, right? If my best friend had had privity over this particular system, then I’m not going to let it go. It’s not a personal issue for me.
So, yes, there have been some positive steps forward. But you would expect that, right? $600 million is a significant amount of money. The question that we should be asking ourselves is not whether progress has been made. The question we should be asking ourselves is, has sufficient progress been made based on the time and the resources committed to these challenges?
On the subject of that money, there’s obviously disagreement over how it should be spent. The goal for JXN Water is to spend the majority of that on debt relief. That’s something that the City of Jackson is not in support of.
Taking a look at the bond rating of both the City and the water system as a whole, you can see it degrade over the years. What about relieving that huge debt is not right?
Let me say this, to be entirely fair. Are there some associated benefits with retiring? Yes. I owe you that honesty, right?
But I would tell you that JXN Water’s effort to retire that debt isn’t entirely pure. It also supports what they intend to do in agreement with the state in creating a regional water system. Because the state doesn’t want to take over a water system that retains debt.
And so it’s not just this pure motive of, “We believe that this will allow us to save money to move forward,” right? It’s, “This is the way that we believe that we can deliver (the water system into) the hands of state leadership that wants to take over the water system by eliminating this debt.”
I would also point back to the part in my letter where I talk about JXN Water’s inappropriate politicization of the issues when they’re supposed to hold a position of neutrality. As a representative of the court, they’re not supposed to be engaged in political battles.
But they’ve clearly crossed the line of neutrality. Understand the position that we’re in, right? We have a list of projects that were prioritized and communicated not only to the City of Jackson but to the EPA that have not been accomplished and there’s no communication there.
We have historic funding that has been provided to them but they still aren’t meeting those benchmarks. And we have the lack of communication that I just want to underscore, repeatedly and consistently. But also we have the press release that supports the takeover of our water system while simultaneously asking the City of Jackson to take out a loan in order to support the debt.
We know that there are things that are unnecessary costs incurred by JXN Water, one being the Summit building that they’re in that cost about $5 million where they house their operations—where they could have just been in the City of Jackson.
There’s a whole floor that could have been dedicated to them in the (633 North State St.) building where all of our other operations are that they could have, they could have leased at no cost. And so you’re saying that you need $35 million when $5 million we can identify just with a back-of-the-envelope assessment is an expense that you didn’t have to take, right?
You point out that Ted Henifin has signed on to Senate Bill 2628, (a bill that died this legislative session) which would determine the future of the Jackson water system, and create—as is usually the case with these legislative boards—something that is tilted toward state-level control.
You assert that in supporting this bill Henifin has breached the wall of impartiality expected of him as an arm of the court.
It’s my understanding that in the stipulated order, one of Henifin’s responsibilities is to develop long-term plans for the system. I don’t think that Henifin could enter into an agreement to remove, or sell off the system assets—
Right, because JXN Water is only the management. All of the equipment, the water treatment facilities, pipes—all belong to the City of Jackson.
But does that prevent him from engaging with the future? Because there is going to be a future for the JXN Water system after the (stipulated order and Ted Henifin’s leadership ends). Do you take the stipulated order to mean that he is barred from pursuing, discussing or even endorsing future plans for what the City of Jackson’s water system might look like?
Well, I’m not saying that he’s barred from having conversations. What I am saying is this: How dare you endorse a plan that you hadn’t even discussed with the residents of Jackson, that you hadn’t even discussed with the City of Jackson, who owns all of the assets, who has the greatest interest in the success of the system, right?
How dare you not even have a conversation with us? That is political in and of itself. That isn’t meeting the obligations of creating a plan going forward. That is attaching yourself to a political position of an arm that has been at odds with the City of Jackson for years. That is what that is.
So that doesn’t pass the smell test to say that “I’m meeting the requirements to consider a plan going forward.” You haven’t had the proper public conversations with all parts of Jackson in order to meet a plan moving forward.
Not to mention that Ted Henifin himself, the previous legislative cycle, expressed great concern about, you know, the way that the State of Mississippi was moving forward.
You don’t feel that that violated the neutrality of his station?
Well, first of all, that was a specific conversation that was pointed toward him and his decision about how he was going to look at billing going forward, right? He was talking about creating—
I was talking about Senate Bill 2889—the original regionalization plan that (Sen. David Parker) came up with. Ted Henifin likened it to a monster in the Mississippi Legislature, and that the bill would create a regional authority that could potentially spend (federal money intended for the Jackson water crisis) outside Jackson. The two of you—
Whether it’s for or against us, he’s not supposed to be in the politics, right?
But you didn’t raise concerns about his neutrality then.
I didn’t. I didn’t. And that’s true, right? But I will say that in either regard, he’s supposed to be neutral. He’s supposed to be a neutral party.
But what I would say is this: His comments—and this may be the reason that I didn’t raise (any concerns)—started because there was also the passage of a bill that restricted the way that he could charge residents.
I made it clear that I had not formulated a position on what he was proposing as a new process of charging people.
He was talking about doing it based on the size or the value of homes, right? What I told Ted Henifin himself then was, “You need to be careful in the conversations that you’re having and how you’re putting things (because you’re) getting into the politics,” right?
Because if it is a good idea—and I still don’t know, I think we’ve pivoted away from that—but if it is a good idea, it will never see the light of day because you’re entering into a political arena that will cut you off at the knees before you have the opportunity to really vet this program that you’re talking about.
Instead of heeding that advice, he decided to go deeper into the politics.
Given our limited time remaining, I want to ask a couple of general questions. It’s my understanding that disagreements like this are meant to be adjudicated at the status conference hearings with Judge Wingate. Why was this approach of going directly to the EPA necessary?
I will just say that we feel that the City of Jackson and the EPA have a shared interest in these issues being resolved.
And this approach was one where we wanted to make sure that we communicated what our concerns were to see if there was alignment on those issues.
When (EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan) came just recently to announce the clean-air grant that was given to JPS for the buses, he was asked questions about the water system and his response was that concerns still remain.
We have had more communication with EPA leadership than we’ve had with Ted Henifin in recent months, right?
I won’t divulge what some of those internal conversations were, but I will say that there are many shared concerns with respect to how the system is operating with the lack of timeliness of these projects. Even with the lack of competitive procurement practices.
And you don’t feel that Judge Wingate and the DOJ have that same shared interest?
I will just leave it at the City of Jackson judged it beneficial because the EPA and the City of Jackson were aligned. I will choose not to comment on what Judge Wingate’s interests are. I’ll let him speak for himself.
A pointed non-comment.
(Laughter).
Got it. So the EPA’s response, in the letter that I saw, was relatively non-committal. Are there other conversations that are going on? Do you feel that this is not fully resolved yet?
We have talked to people on multiple levels of the EPA and in leadership, and there certainly has been a communication of concern. What they choose to put in writing, I’m sure, is calculated. That’s all I’ll say.
Okay, I’ll (send a Freedom of Information Act request to) them and I’ll find out what they said in three or four years. (Laughter)
(Laughter) Yeah.
Just speaking as a resident of Jackson, it’s disappointing to see the City and (JXN Water) at odds like this. What can be done to mend this relationship?
I think that the residents of Jackson should feel secure that its city leadership won’t rest until we figure out a solution to this decades-old problem. We’re not here to just cause problems or challenges to the third-party management team.
These are the things we’re raising: A lack of competitive procurement, a lack of progress on priority projects, insufficient communication and coordination, uncertainty in financial planning, improper public support of the Legislature. Those are things that I think that the residents of Jackson are concerned about.
I don’t see anything in my letter that is a personal affront against Ted Henifin, that is saying that I don’t want you to be successful, that we want you to get out of town, right?
We entered into the agreed stipulated order when he didn’t know that he was going to have a dollar to do this work, right? We made certain that we got historic funding so that he could actually succeed in this work.
We just want to have the conversation of whether we are still in agreement. Do we still have unity of purpose and unity of mind that we’re going to do these things? I think those are fair questions to be asked, I think these are fair concerns to be raised. These aren’t personal attacks against anybody.
Read the interview with Ted Henifin here, including his responses to some of Mayor Lumumba’s criticisms.
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