City Councilmen Jay H. Banks (left) and Joe Giarrusso III attend their first meeting of the City Council on May 7, 2018. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
Following his campaign pledge to make the ongoing problems with the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans a primary focus, Councilman Joe Giarrusso and his colleagues have demanded the agency’s leaders appear before the City Council next month and answer a specific set of questions.
Giarrusso sent the letter Thursday, signed by all his fellow council members, noting that the Sewerage & Water Board is obligated by state law to make quarterly reports to the City Council, and calling the failure of its March report to provide important information “indefensible and inexcusable.” The letter insists that the agency’s leaders make its June report in person to the Council, and answer specific questions, such as:
- a current report on water lost by the system,
- the number of billing complaints, and average time to correct them,
- measures to fight waste and fraud by employees,
- an update on unfilled positions, noting estimates of 400 to 600,
- reporting on how the agency uses the money budgeted for salaries of those unfilled positions
- an update on the status of the call center,
- a report on coordination with the city’s Department of Public Works for road repairs, and
- an update on the water tower installation,
“On behalf of all S&WB customers, we want a full and public accounting of information to which the Council is entitled,” the letter concludes.
For more information, see the full news release from Giarrusso’s office below, or read the letter sent to the Sewerage & Water Board:
On Thursday, May 10 the New Orleans City Council delivered a letter to the Interim Executive Director of the Sewerage and Water Board, Marcie Edwards, as well other senior Sewerage and Water Board leadership. The letter, initiated and drafted by Councilmember Joe Giarrusso and including guidance and consent from all councilmembers, spells out the councilmembers’ expectations for compliance with statutorily required quarterly reports. A “forward-looking exercise,” the councilmembers aim to avoid a repeat of the most recent reports prepared by the utility, the deficiencies of which the letter calls “indefensible and inexcusable.”
“I hope that this will be considered the measuring stick by which all future reports will be based. While I’m glad the leadership at the Sewerage and Water Board is beginning to acknowledge and attempting to address some of the critical failures at the utility, there are many questions that remain unanswered and New Orleanians deserve much better,” said Joseph I. Giarrusso III, Councilmember for District A. Giarrusso’s district includes many of the utility’s facilities and suffered significant flooding during the rain events in late summer 2017.
The letter points out the myriad frustrations experienced by every water customer in the city. Specifically: untimely, estimated, or grossly inflated bills and tremendous obstacles to correcting billing mistakes. The councilmembers are requesting concrete information regarding numbers of complaints about billing and service. Among the first requests is that the Sewerage and Water Board prioritize fixing its bills and customer appeals process immediately.
The letter also addresses fraud and abuse at the utility, citing recent reports of employees stealing brass and using fake handicapped parking tags in order to hoard metered spots near the main office building. “I believe the majority of Sewerage and Water Board employees are doing their best under tough conditions. However, when this kind of brazen abuse is allowed to continue, it’s clear a cultural shift is needed,” continued Giarrusso. Insufficient staffing has long plagued the utility. Potential solutions, such as higher wages, reconsidering the residency requirement, and adjusting job descriptions are also addressed in the letter.
Further questions regarding critical infrastructure failures in the rainwater collection system, power generation, power distribution, and drainage pumping station capacity, detailed with specificity in an after-incident report published by Veolia, are also included in the letter, which demands that the utility, “respond to all capacity data raised in the Veolia report.”
“This is the first step to get a full and public accounting of information of what’s going on at the Sewerage and Water Board, which is desperately needed and something I heard every day on the campaign trail. We want to work with the utility to improve services for all citizens,” said Giarrusso.
In June the Sewerage and Water Board will present to the Public Works, Sanitation, and Environment Committee for the first time under this new City Council term, and the councilmembers expect appropriate personnel with knowledge and expertise with the reporting requirements to appear and be prepared to answer specific questions.
