It was packed at Hal & Mal’s as a hundred or so Jackson movers and shakers came to enjoy red beans and rice and hear the latest from Jackson’s federal water czar Ted Henifin.
Henifin was there at the invitation of the Stennis-Capitol Press Forum, a long-running cooperative effort of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University and the Capitol press corps to promote greater transparency in government.
Henifin did not disappoint. He gave an off-the-cuff 45-minute talk on all the many positive developments with Jackson water. He displayed a refreshing competency that has been sorely lacking in Jackson for a long time. He was well received.
The highlights included:
— JXN Water (the new corporation for Henifin’s operation) has approximately $800 million at its disposal, which Henifin predicts will be enough to permanently put Jackson water on a stable, profitable footing.
— $115 million of that has already been granted by the federal government and is being spent. Fifteen million has already been spent on leak repairs.
— A top-notch contract operator for the water treatment plants has been hired and is currently running the plants. “We worked hard to get the best contractor in the country. They currently operate about 250 similar facilities across the United States. They are the largest in this business. Their name is Jacobs.” Jacobs was critical in turning the plant around during the crisis.
(Jackson’s water system consists of a six-water-well system in southwest Jackson serving 15,000 people. The rest of the city is served by surface water from the reservoir treated by two treatment plants, the Fewell plant in the waterworks curve and the Curtis plant at the reservoir.)
— The contract with Jacobs is six months. A “firm fixed cost 10 year contract” term contract will hopefully be negotiated this fall when both sides have better data on the operations.
— Investments in both treatment plants have increased capacity. “From a plant perspective, we’re in a really good place.”
— By this time next year, the Fewell plant, constructed in 1914, may be shut down.
— Most of the employees at the water plant are city employees under the direction of JXN Water. “I pay them a supplement on top of their city salary to get them to the level that they’re actually doing the work that I need done.” One of those was supervisor Terence Byrd who heroically kept the Fewell plant up and running during the crisis. Another is the former public works director Jordan Hillman, now chief operating officer of the plant. “The two of them have done amazing things over the last several months, one of which was using deductive reasoning, studying maps and then testing water out of fire hydrants to determine where valves that should have been open were closed. Sixty major valves have been opened as a result of their efforts. That’s why we can stand here today and say that the pressure is much better and much more reliable than it’s been in many, many years.
These valves were closed during repairs but because of bad maps and incomplete data, they were never reopened after the repairs were complete. It takes two full sized men turning a 15-foot valve key 200 times to open the valves back up after a repair. Henifin said it’s “disappointing” that crews failed to reopen critical valves “but now we have a method to find those improperly closed valves.”
— Wachs Water has been hired to assess, rehabilitate and map all the valves, which will provide far greater ability to diagnose problems and make repairs. The company has more than 20 years experience with 300 utility companies across North America and has serviced over a million valves. “We’ll know exactly which ones are functional, which ones aren’t, all the GPS locations. That work will be complete late this year. They will do fire hydrants as well. That’s about a 5.5 million dollar contract. Thanks to the federal government, we have the money to pay for something like that.”
— Several pipe contractors are working right now to respond to everything that needs to be done. “They’ve hired a bunch of our former water maintenance utility people. Now they have the equipment and supervision necessary to actually get their jobs done now and they’re doing great work.” As an example, these contractors responded rapidly this week to a blow out on Old Canton Road. “We have a lot more attention on the system now. When that leak happened, the first person we heard from was Jeff Good at Broad Street. He’s been the canary in the coal mine for some time now. We solved his problem largely by opening some valves around his restaurant and he hasn’t had any water pressure issues in months, so we immediately knew it had to be a break somewhere nearby. We had all sorts of people texting us and we were able to respond quickly. Without that attention, a break like that would have drained the system.”
— The system still doesn’t have independent pressure zones so a break can take down the whole system quickly and drain the storage tanks. “It’s like dominos falling. It takes a week or more to recover. We are in the process of putting multiple management systems in place: work order systems, asset management systems, all this stuff sounds really insignificant but it’s huge when you’re trying to operate a water system without enough data to see what’s going on. We’ve put pressure monitors in 25 different locations. Prior to that the only way we knew there was pressure in the system was when it left the treatment plant.”
— The EPA average water usage is 88 gallons per day per person. Jackson has 150,000 persons on the water system, so Jackson shouldn’t need more than 15 million gallons of water a day. Even if you add 33 percent loss, Jackson should not need more than 20 million gallons a day. “Yet we’re putting more than 50 million into the system every day. That’s because we have leaks everywhere.” Henifin estimates that leaks fixed in the last few months are now saving 10 million gallons a day. “We’ve fixed hundreds of leaks.”
There was tons more to Henifin’s talk. I urge you to listen to the full video posted above. It will make you feel confident that Jackson will be able to put their water woes behind.
I asked 10 or so people at the meeting what they thought. They all said Henifin was the real deal. I couldn’t agree more.
People often complain about the high salaries that top-notch managers get paid. But Henifin’s half-million salary is worth its weight in gold. There’s a lesson to be learned there.
