I got a chance to listen for two and a half hours to Jackson water czar Ted Henifin. Consider me sold. This guy is brilliant. Having him solve our water crisis is like manna from heaven.
Like everybody else, I freaked out when I heard his proposal to throw out all the meters and go to water bills based on property values. It only took about 10 minutes of explanation before I did an about face. This is a great idea.
Couple of things you have to understand to get this: First of all, people taking long showers, flushing the toilet too many times or watering their lawns for hours — all these things have a negligible effect on Jackson’s water supply.
A city the size of Jackson should need 15 million gallons of water per day. Right now, to keep water pressure up, our water plants have to produce 45 million gallons a day. That means a whopping 30 million gallons every day are just draining into our streets and soil through leaky pipes.
Numerous studies have shown that pricing has a negligible effect on household water consumption. People are going to consume a fixed amount of water within a narrow range no matter what. People are going to take showers. They’re going to flush. They’re going to wash their clothes and dishes within a very predictable range. To put it in economic terms, water consumption is inelastic.
What we need to do is properly staff the water plants, implement a system-wide model of our water system and start replacing leaky pipes. Thank the Lord Jackson now has access to $600 million to fix the pipes. But that money cannot be spent on maintenance. The money for maintenance must come from water billing revenue.
Therein lies the problem. The water department is losing about $10 million a year. Collections are in the tank. People aren’t paying their bills.
What’s worse is the water billing department has lost its leverage because the billing has been so screwed up for five years. How can you use legal means to collect when the customers have valid billing complaints? If the billing department started cutting people off, they would be inundated with lawsuits. It’s a Catch-22 situation.
It all started with the Siemens meters 12 years ago. They never were installed correctly (thanks to some shady sub-contractors). And the new meters to replace them aren’t working worth a darn. Mine has been leaking for two months, despite numerous attempts at repair. My water bill is triple.
As Henifin said, “Restoring trust in Jackson’s meter billing system is a bridge too far in our lifetime.”
Basically, for whatever reason, Jackson doesn’t have the competency to properly install meters, link them to a billing system and get out accurate bills. That’s just a fact.
Attempting to solve this Rubik’s cube will distract Henifin’s crackerjack staff from the real task at hand: Replacing leaky pipes and implementing advanced modeling controls to prevent low pressure and boil alerts.
So let’s just forget the water meters and bill each household a water and sewer bill based on the assessed value of the property. Have a max of $150 and a minimum of $50.
Even better would be to make it part of the property tax and bill it that way. The property tax works. People pay it or lose their house. Every property has to consume water. It turns an impossibly complex tax into something simple. The mechanism for collection already exists and works.
With everybody then paying a reasonable and fair water bill, collections would soar, the water department would be profitable again and Henifin would be able to properly staff the water department.
Remember, Jackson residents and businesses lost a million dollars a day for seven weeks because of this water crisis. Let’s not be penny wise and pound foolish.
People with big houses are understandably worried, but that’s what the maximum cap is for. Don’t reject the plan outright until you see some real numbers. In fact, high end homeowners with sprinkler systems could see their water bills drop.
Jackson water czar Ted Henifin
One issue is the renters. Fifty percent of Jacksonians rent either houses or apartments. I would argue that works just fine. The property owners pay for water through their property taxes and build that into their rent. Problem solved. No bad debt. No collection issues. Everybody pays either directly or indirectly.
The property tax idea is not Henifin’s but it’s the logical conclusion of his concept. Henifin is proposing water bills based on assessed value. Under his concept, you would still get a bill from the water department.
But the beauty of it is no more hassling with screwed up water bills. No more dealing with leaky meters. No telling how many Jacksonians have wasted dozens of hours dealing with this craziness. I know I have.
As for the big home owners, whatever extra you would pay in a water bill will be peanuts compared to the increase in your property value if Jackson could turn around its water crisis. I have a reasonably sized home and I would love to have this wild card stabilized. And no more screaming at the kids to get out of the shower!
Henifin’s current idea is to charge businesses the same max as large home owners, $150 or so. This would be a big windfall for some water-intensive businesses, such as restaurants, but Lord knows they deserve a break after what they’ve been through. The savings can get passed on to consumers. It could be a selling point for business recruitment.
There are a lot of details to be worked out but the basic concept is excellent. Turn a horrible collections situation into an excellent collections situation and wash our hands of the horrible unreliability and uncertainty of water meters. No more straight piping fraud. No more crazy water bills.
This is the type of out-of-the-box thinking you would expect to a $400,000-a-year water guru with a lifetime of experience at the highest levels of his industry. Please, I beg you, don’t handcuff this guy. Let him do his job and fix this mess.
Henifin spent two and a half hours of his Sunday night talking to a group of Fondren movers and shakers. He was personable, warm, genuine, funny, respectful, courteous and uber smart. This guy is the real deal. He’s been doing these talks all around town to marshall support. And he doesn’t even have to. He’s the czar. With the backing of the judge he can do anything he wants.
