The newly appointed man tasked with overseeing the City of Jackson’s water crisis has been called a visionary and groundbreaking within the water utility industry.
Perhaps a bit of utility world hyperbole, but articles have compared him to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
Ted Henifin has been appointed as the City of Jackson water system’s third-party administrator and takes over a system that has more than a century of mismanaged decisions.
According to the interim stipulated order, Henifin will be paid $400,000 a year, which will include his salary, living expenses and travel expenses.
The order also notes that other staff will be compensated up to $725,000. Those positions would include a local deputy administrator/senior project manager, project managers/contract inspectors, a contract administrator/invoice processor and an environmental compliance manager.
The total budget for all professional services is $2,976,500.
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The U.S. Department of Justice filed a proposal in federal court Tuesday that would appoint an interim third-party manager to stabilize the City of Jackson’s water crisis.
“We have enjoyed building a working relationship with him since the start of the emergency,” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said in a release Wednesday. “Mr. Henifin has been instrumental in lending his expertise to our recovery thus far. This agreement allows us to work collaboratively with someone we trust to make smart choices for the city’s drinking water system and ensure that we can provide safe, clean and sustainable drinking water for all.”
An online profile of Henifin says he is a registered professional engineer who served 15 years as general manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District in Virginia. Before that, he served as director of public works for the city of Hampton, Virginia.
Henifin’s career has spanned nearly 40 years and during that time he’s held roles in public works and utilities in federal and local government.
He graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in civil engineering.
“After months of collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Mississippi Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the City of Jackson is pleased that we have finally reached an agreement that represents a critical next step in our efforts to provide immediate and long-term solutions for Jackson’s water issues,” Lumumba said. “I appreciate that the City Council and Honorable Judge Henry T. Wingate signed off on the Interim Stipulated Order in one accord with my administration. This agreement allows us to move forward in the most beneficial direction for the City of Jackson to secure a more sustainable, affordable and equitable system.
Gov. Tate Reeves commented on the announcement Tuesday, saying, “It is excellent news for anyone who cares about the people of Jackson that [Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba] will no longer be overseeing the city’s water system. It is now out of the city’s control, and will be overseen by a federal court.”
The governor, who has not made any efforts to hide his disdain for the leadership in Jackson during the water crisis, took credit for helping the city out of the worst of the problems in August. Jackson’s water crisis left most homes and businesses in the city in a boil-water notice for 45 days from late July until early September.
“It has been a chaotic series of months, while the state has assumed their responsibility. The people on the ground who rushed to help were floored by the negligence,” Reeves said. “They did heroic work to fix so many broken things and support the frontline city workers who had been abandoned. We committed millions of dollars from taxpayers across Mississippi to solve this crisis of incompetence.”
On Nov. 17, Jackson’s City Council approved an order for agreement with the federal government on how to fix the city’s beleaguered water system.
“The state of emergency came to an end last week, but I have authorized MEMA to commit another $240,000 from the state’s Disaster Mitigation Fund for maintenance as a bridge between today and the new leadership,” Reeves said. “That should help close out this chapter without further chaos.”
According to a statement from the Department of Justice, the city and the Mississippi State Department of Health have signed this order and agreed to its terms. At the same time, the Justice Department, on behalf of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, filed a complaint against the city alleging that the city has failed to provide drinking water that is reliably compliant with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to the system’s customers. The proposal, which was called a “proposed stipulated order” in court filings, is meant to serve as an interim measure while the United States, the city, and MSDH attempt to negotiate a judicially enforceable consent decree to achieve long-term sustainability of the system and the city’s compliance with the SDWA and other relevant laws.
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“The public release of the previously confidential agreement will now allow us to move forward with more robust community engagement around the mid- to long-term recovery plan and begin making the necessary changes to address challenges such as increasing the number of water plant operators, conducting consistent and immediate repair and maintenance at our water plants, and hopefully issuing fewer boil water notices,” Lumumba said. “The agreement is another step in a long process and is a collective effort that ensures Jacksonians will not be forgotten, and that our ultimate goal of creating a sustainable water system, will be realized. Henifin would have the authority to, among other things:
- Operate and maintain the city’s public drinking water system in compliance with SDWA, the Mississippi Safe Drinking Water Act, and related regulations.
- Take charge of the Water Sewer Business Administration, the arm of the city responsible for billing water users.
- Implement capital improvements to the city’s public drinking water system, in particular, a set of priority projects meant to improve the system’s near-term stability, including a winterization project meant to make the system less vulnerable to winter storms.
- Correct conditions within the city’s public drinking water system that present, or may present, an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of the city’s residents.
Jackson is set to receive $71.3 million to upgrade its water system with funds from the American Rescue Plan and a state dollar-for-dollar match program. Lumumba has said in the past that it could cost as much as $1 billion to fix the water system, though that number has reduced in recent days. State leaders say the system needs far less.
“I want to thank our state and federal partners, especially EPA Administrator Michael Regan, for their ongoing advocacy and support as we work toward long-term recovery and sustainability,” Lumumba said. “We hope that this collaborative effort to repair, replace and modernize Jackson’s water infrastructure will become a national model for other U.S. cities facing similar issues.”
The EPA announced Oct. 20 that it had started a civil rights investigation into whether Mississippi state agencies discriminated against Jackson by refusing to fund improvements for its failing water system.
President Joe Biden approved a federal emergency declaration on Aug 30. Volunteers and the National Guard distributed millions of bottles of drinking water.
