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S&WB plans to collect on more than 23,000 delinquent accounts

With 23,195 delinquent accounts and another 26,000 accounts under investigation since 2016, the S&WB is feeling the effects of uncollected revenue from their customers.

NEW ORLEANS -- While the beleaguered New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board works to fix problems from drainage to billing to a cash shortfall, the agency will soon turn to its slow-paying customers to do their part by squaring up their accounts.

More than 23,000 S&WB accounts are currently delinquent, meaning the utility is not receiving payments from them without reason. Together, these accounts owe a balance of $13.5 million.

“There are some folks who have not paid bills for months,” Interim Executive Director Jade Brown Russell said at the S&WB Board of Directors meeting on Wednesday.

After inaccurate bills and customer disputes began piling up, the agency in November stopped cutting off water to delinquent households. Suspending shutoffs was meant for accounts being disputed, but other households have also stopped paying, according to the agency.

The “no shut-off” policy was scheduled to end on March 1, but it has been extended indefinitely.

With 23,195 delinquent accounts and another 26,000 accounts under investigation since 2016, the S&WB is feeling the effects of uncollected revenue from their customers.

“So we’re seeing a deficit on the sanitation side as well, so it’s going to have to change,” Mayor Latoya Cantrell said at Wednesday’s meeting.

While there’s been discussion on how to resume water cut-offs, the city is not ready to announce a date.

“Hopefully, another week or so. We were hoping to be able to announce it at this meeting, but again, wanting to have all of our ducks in a row,” Cantrell said. “I don’t want to get into this pattern of building you up to let you down. We want to be able to, when we announce, move right into implementation.”

Cantrell said she is mindful that some delinquent customers may still have issues with how much they have been billed.

“I’m confident that once we have unveiled our strategy to deal with that population who have suffered from the over-billing, then at the same time we can roll out the water shut-off policy,” Cantrell said.

Russell also stated that the S&WB has identified the 25 largest balances owed to the utility. Those specific accounts have not yet been released to the public.

“We are working very closely with the mayor’s team. We are focusing on making sure we’re doing that right. We have to make sure we’re restoring the public’s confidence in our ability to deliver correct bills to households.” Russell said.

“I do not want us to begin to cut water off without addressing the billing matters,” Cantrell said.

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