JACKSON, Miss.—After nearly three years of federal oversight, the Jackson City Council said it is time to place management of the city’s water and sewer systems back under local control in a resolution passed on Tuesday.
Ward 3 City Councilman Kenneth Stokes, who proposed the resolution, said during the Oct. 7 Council meeting that “citizens are beginning to lose faith in JXN Water.”
He cited a number of reasons for the resolution, primarily that he was not satisfied with the agency’s service disconnection process and customer service practices.
The resolution comes as the third-party administrator of JXN Water who has overseen the system since the 2022 Jackson water crisis, Ted Henifin, wrestles with again raising water utility rates.
He told a federal judge last year that he was committed to staying in Jackson until 2027 to get the system to long-term sustainability. Henifin says the rate increase is necessary to cover the continued costs of operating both the water and sewer systems.
‘Securing Clean, Safe Water for Jackson’
The United States Department of Justice appointed Ted Henifin to oversee operations and maintenance of the city’s water system in November 2022, following back-to-back catastrophes in 2021 and 2022 that left residents without consistent access to safe drinking water for weeks at a time.
Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan said in 2022 that Henifin’s appointment and the federal stipulated order declaring oversight marked a milestone in the pursuit of long-term sustainability of the city’s water infrastructure.
“I pledged that EPA would do everything in its power to ensure the people of Jackson have clean and dependable water, now and into the future,” Regan wrote in a statement. “While there is much more work ahead, the Justice Department’s action marks a critical moment on the path to securing clean, safe water for Jackson residents.”
Henifin subsequently took over the helm of the city’s sewer system operations in 2023.
The company touts a decrease in city-wide boil water notices, major infrastructure repairs that make the system more equipped to handle winter storms and securing a ten-year contract with Jacobs Engineering for continued operations and maintenance of the system as some successes during Henifin’s tenure so far.
“We’re not getting flooded with mobs of folks coming in and saying they’re upset with anything. Frankly, it’s pretty calm and cool at the moment,” he said in a 2024 interview with the Mississippi Free Press. “And we’re largely getting kudos from folks—unsolicited. If there was a problem, I think we would know about it. Every test we run that goes to the health department gets posted on our website. You can see every little test that’s been run,” Henifin continued. “I don’t think we could be any more transparent than we are.”
Still, this year, some residents and elected officials alike have asked the company for greater transparency over how it sets water rates, its handling of multifamily units with overdue payments and its procedures for disconnecting service.
‘It’s Time’
Ward 3 Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes said on Tuesday that while he originally appreciated the federal government’s intervention when the water system was at crisis level, he now believes it’s time for Jackson to regain control of operating the system.
“Nobody is up here saying we want to go back to no water and dirty water,” Stokes said on Oct. 7, adding that the City is now equipped to handle the task.
“We have a different mayor and we have a public works director,” Stokes continued. “We’re saying it’s time now to consider giving the water system back to the city.”
The resolution—which passed by a 6-1 vote—is nonbinding and does not require any immediate action to take place, but serves as a formal record of the Council’s stance on the issue.
The Council rejected Henifin’s assertion in April that raising rates was necessary to raise revenue for the continued operations and maintenance of both the water and sewer systems.
At the time, they asked him to consider how residents might respond to the agency raising rates for the second time in about a year, particularly since each bill now includes a $40 availability fee for customers regardless of water usage.
They advised him, instead, to focus on increasing the agency’s collection rate on past-due bills. “If your collection rate was higher, you probably wouldn’t be coming and asking for a 12% increase; it may have been a 2% increase,” Ward 4 City Councilman Brian Grizzell told Henifin on April 8.
Tuesday’s resolution shows they now believe JXN Water is no longer needed. Grizzell, who voted for the resolution, said in an Oct. 7 interview with the Mississippi Free Press that he supports placing operations of Jackson’s water system under a multi-member board. He said it could be structured similarly to the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority.
“Just like the airport board, the mayor puts commissioners or members before the Council, we vet them and we vote on them to confirm them and they serve in terms,” he said. “That way, we can have greater input on the level of customer service that our residents receive.”
Ward 1 City Councilman Ashby Foote was the sole dissenting voice, voting against the resolution for Jackson to regain control of the system. He told the Mississippi Free Press he thinks that JXN Water is doing a good job handling the system for now and that city leaders should focus resources on addressing issues like crime, economic growth and blight elimination.
“I don’t see the water system as a real problem,” he said in an interview with the Mississippi Free Press following the meeting. “We’ve got a lot less sanitary sewer overflows than we had three or four years ago. We’ve got a lot less boil water notices. So it’s being run in a way that’s professional.”
‘They Asked Us To Collect’
In an Oct. 7 interview with the Mississippi Free Press, JXN Water Lead Communications Specialist Aisha Carson said that despite previous directives from council members to increase collection rates before considering a rate increase, some members of the Council have called the agency to ask it to return water access to residents with unpaid bills.
She questioned the motives behind the resolution.
“In these past few months, they asked us to collect. They said, ‘We want your collection rate up. Don’t talk about a rate increase until you get your rate up.’ We do that and then we get calls every day to our office,” she told the Mississippi Free Press.
“Councilman Stokes has specifically called us to turn people back on, and they haven’t paid their bill yet,” Carson continued. “So you asked us to enforce collections, but you’re asking us to turn constituents back on outside of the process. So are we supposed to do collections the way we’re supposed to do it?”
Stokes told the Mississippi Free Press he wants the agency to provide billing adjustments to customers who may be struggling to pay bills.
However, Carson said, the agency is committed to equitable enforcement of their collection procedures, particularly when a customer’s bill is past due for over a year or longer.
“What they want us to do is supersede the policy we’ve put into place around severance and pick and choose when we cut people back on, and that’s something that we’ve made a decision to not do,” she said.
After the meeting on Tuesday, Councilman Foote told the Mississippi Free Press that allowing JXN Water to continue overseeing the water and sewer operations for now would provide a respite to the City’s new Public Works Director, Lorenzo Anderson, as he acclimates to the role.
Jackson went without a permanent public works director for two years, leaning heavily on contractors to handle the city’s engineering projects after former city engineer Robert Lee resigned in 2024.
“I’m wishing him the best, but I think the fact that he doesn’t have water and sewer on his plate (right now), hopefully, he’ll be more effective at addressing the other public works services we have,” Foote said. “He can focus on infrastructure, potholes, road repairs, those things that are really important to the citizens and not have to go through the drill over water and sewer.”