Collection rates for JXN Water are down, but more money is coming in, says the third-party manager

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – Jackson’s top water official recently tried to clear up some misconceptions about JXN Water’s collection rate, saying it’s lower than the city’s, but that’s only because it charges more customers.

Interim third-party manager Ted Henifin appeared before U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate on Thursday where he gave an overview of the status of his efforts to bring Jackson’s water system into compliance with federal law.

The hearing became contentious at times as Wingate questioned attorneys from the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency about the rationale for an upcoming community meeting on Jackson Water.

The judge also rejected requests from ACLU attorneys to raise “community concerns,” saying the status conference was not the appropriate forum to do so.

“We will have a period of concern. “Right now this is a status conference to determine where we are and what is going on,” he said.

Mikaila Hernandez, an attorney with the ACLU, said she informed the court of her presence and requested time to speak.

Wingate asked if Hernandez was arguing with him. When she said she was pushing back, he told her to sit down.

Aside from heated moments, some of the discussion focused on JXN Water’s collection rate, which has come under fire in recent months for being lower than the city’s before the third party took over.

“Some people like to talk about the collection rate, but that’s not the actual number,” he said. “The real number is how much you charge and how much you collect.”

Henifin cited December 2022 as an example and said the city had collected 90 percent of the amounts billed at that time. However, Jackson billed far less than JXN Water is today.

“We charged our customers $4.9 million for water. We raised $4.4 million,” he said, referring to the city. “That was a collection rate of 90 percent. It sounds great, but… $4.9 million was half of what we should have charged.”

By comparison, in August, Henifin said, JXN Water sent out about $9.8 million in billings and collected $5.8 million.

“The collection rate is only 60 percent, but it was $1.4 million more than when we started,” he said.

Henifin was appointed third-party manager of the Jackson water system in November 2022. The following year he took over management of Jackson’s sewer system.

JXN Water assumed full billing responsibility in October 2023. In the previous 10 months, the city collected 57.8 percent of the billed amounts of $65.4 million, or $37.8 million.

Between October 2023 and June 2024, JXN Water collected $44,180,516, more than 63 percent of the $69,896,100 billed, records on the utility’s website show.

Henifin also spoke about progress on other fronts. Since taking over the city’s sewer system in September 2023, the third-party manager has resolved all 215 emergency sewer outages listed in the court order.

“I stood before you a year ago and estimated how long it would take, two to three years. I am pleased to announce today that all of these issues have been resolved,” he told Judge Wingate.

As with the water takeover, Henifin was tasked with a list of priority projects to stabilize the wastewater system while the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice worked out a new consent decree with Jackson.

Unlike the water takeover, Henifin received no federal funding for the repairs, meaning they were all done with local dollars.

“This is something that is not normal in any city,” he said. “The fact that we have been dumping raw sewage into the Jackson Strait every day for years was just unthinkable.”

Henifin said JXN Water has also cleared a backlog of service requests. Another priority project for the third-party manager was responding to approximately 2,200 unanswered service calls.

“People were calling the city to report a sewage problem and no one had gone out and looked at the 2,200 sites,” he said. “When the order was signed and we took responsibility, we started investigating… [going] to them, [determining] what the problem was. I’m happy to report that we only have 200 left…We should have the rest ready by the end of November, definitely by the end of the year.”

On the water side, Henifin has reduced overall water losses by approximately 15 million gallons per day, reducing pressure on Jackson’s two surface water treatment plants.

“We’ve been looking for large leaks and small leaks throughout the system… We’re still looking for water leaks. We believe most of them are underground,” he told the judge.

[READ: Resident, Jackson City Council members again raise concerns about utility cuts]

Henifin said JXN Water has hired several companies to try new technologies to locate these leaks. He said it was too early to determine whether those efforts had been successful.

Meanwhile, Henifin still hasn’t been able to quantify how much the water losses have cost taxpayers in dollar terms.

He told Wingate that he would have that answer by the time he submitted his next quarterly report.

In the meantime, other work continues.

The outside manager said assessments are underway to determine where lead pipes need to be replaced in response to the EPA’s lead and copper rule.

So far, more than 500 sites have been excavated across the city, with teams finding fewer than 10 with lead connections.

Henifin said those connections have been replaced and he doesn’t expect to find any more based on the assessments.

“We replaced the ones we got our hands on. The rest were on abandoned utility lines,” he said. “There just isn’t a lot of lead in the Jackson water system.”

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