Prytania Street was transformed into a pit in 2015 for the installation of new drainage canals underground. (photo courtesy of Manual Mondragon, @mm_dragon on Twitter)
Joe Giarrusso III
Susan Guidry
In the very same conversation, however, her successor Joe Giarrusso III, speaks just as resolutely about his intent to fix the beleagured agency.
Speaking before the Uptown Triangle Neighborhood Association on Wednesday in what may be her last community meeting while in office, Guidry fielded questions — as is becoming usual — about strangely high bills coming from the Sewerage and Water Board. Guidry said urged residents to appeal the problem to the Sewerage & Water Board, pay their normal monthly amount, and report it to her office so they can follow up as well.
“We’re doing that so they know we know,” Guidry said. “They have promised that they will not turn off anyone’s water while it’s being investigated.”
One woman in the audience told Guidry that she seems to get no bills for several months in a row, then a single massive bill in a “lump sum.” Another resident said he receives his bill every month, but that “two months out of three” are an estimate, indicating that no one actually read his meter.
The high bills are the latest in a litany of failures by the agency that City Council members are continuing to learn about since its catastrophic collapse during the flooding rain last August, Guidry said. The billing software is riddled with bugs, and its implementation was “terrible,” she said. Meanwhile, turnover among agency employees is so high that she recently heard an estimate that they have 400 vacancies.
“Where this will end, goodness only knows,” Guidry said with a wry laugh. “It’s astounding. I think I’ve heard everything, and then I hear something else.”
Further, there seem to be problems now with the actual readings, Guidry said. The problem may be growing so large and so complex that a solution may not even be possible, she said.
“It does seem to me that there should be a lawsuit that comes out of this for all the people who paid too much. Some entrepreneurial attorney is going to figure it out,” Guidry said. “The Sewerage & Water Board has been in such bad shape lately that I’m afraid it’s just going to go bankrupt. I can’t sugar coat this. Everything that could be wrong is wrong.”
The only area that has seen any improvement is the maintenance of the drainage pumps and the power supply, Guidry said. Even those gains may be unsustainable, however, if the agency cannot keep track of its finances.
“If they’re not billing people, and people aren’t paying, how can they determine their revenues?” Guidry asked. “It makes me shudder.”
In another sign of the agency’s dysfunction, Guidry said her office has determined that a massive pothole at Nashville and Magazine is the result of a Sewerage & Water Board project that simply was never repaved. The S&WB is supposed to pay the city Department of Public Works to fix streets after it repairs underground pipes, but those payments stopped during the agency’s turmoil, so the street repairs did as well, Guidry said, until the City Council became aware of the issue and ordered them to resume.
“With all the insanity that’s happened with the Sewerage & Water Board in the last couple of months, they stopped paying the Department of Public Works,” Guidry said. “But now we’ve got the Sewerage & Water Board sending money to the Department of Public Works, and they’re restarting the work.”
The one bright spot, Guidry said, is her confidence in Giarrusso’s determination to investigate and solve the problems. The City Council has a Public Works committee, she said, and Giarrusso should be the one to chair it.
“I know he intends to get in there and be quite a bear about it,” Guidry said. “I’m hoping that Joe gets to the bottom of this.”
Giarrusso, who was also present at the neighborhood meeting, said that the Sewerage & Water Board will be a “passion project” for him. As part of his staff, he has hired Ashley Spears from the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office to have a special focus on investigating Sewerage & Water Board problems.
While Giarrusso declined to discuss committee assignments until the full City Council has decided on them, he did say that the Sewerage & Water Board is required by state law to give quarterly reports to the council’s Public Works committee.
“My view has been that the Sewerage & Water Board has not reported as adequately and fully as it could and should,” Giarrusso said. “One of our first steps will be ask the Sewerage & Water Board in writing about the areas where the reporting requirements have been deficient.”
Some residents have called for the Sewerage & Water Board to lose its status as a separate state agency and folded back into the city’s Department of Public Works, while others have suggested it be privatized. Giarrusso said he opposes privatization, but will need much more information before he can determine what structure will ultimately be best for it.
“I am not for privatization, and I haven’t been for privatization,” Giarrusso said. “What we need to do is have a better understanding of its leadership and governance. Before we say it is unquestionably and irrevocably broken, it’s better to seek the information we’re looking for first.”
