SWB Becoming a City Department by 2028 Won’t Fix It

New Orleans is renaming its water problem. That’s not the same as fixing it.

The city wants the Sewerage and Water Board folded entirely into city government by 2028, run as a department instead of an independent utility. City Council already took over the checkbook on Aug. 1. A new board president is already in place, and a transition officer gets named next month. On paper, this looks like accountability finally showing up.

I want to know what it actually fixes.

What Changed on Aug. 1

The council spent months lobbying the state legislature for this, and it worked. SWBNO now needs council sign-off on its budget, its capital plans, its rates, its borrowing, its major contracts and its leadership decisions. Reports that used to go to the board quarterly now go to council chambers every two weeks.

Council Vice President Matthew Willard put it plainly: “We can open up their books, we can see what they’re spending money on, we can see how much their contracts are for.” Councilmember Jason Hughes called it “a new level of accountability.”

Fine. The council didn’t have that kind of leverage before, and now it does. What it chose to do with it in the first month is the part worth slowing down on.

What Triggered It

Mid-July brought flooding, pump failures and a boil-water advisory, on top of years of billing complaints and a court settlement over French Quarter construction. The council had every reason to want more say.

Here’s the leverage in action. Council President JP Morrell, on Randy Hayman’s paycheck: “The head of the SWB makes a half a million dollars … we fired LSU football coaches for less than the job Randy Hayman’s done.” Good line. Wrong target.

The Project Nobody’s Grilling Anyone Over

Here’s what actually put the city at flood risk this summer: SWBNO’s West Power Complex, a $300 million project meant to replace the utility’s aging turbines, is still not finished. It’s already needed tens of millions more than budgeted to complete a single substation, and it’s still incomplete — which means the city is still leaning on backup power to run its pumps whenever a real storm shows up.

That project sits under General Superintendent Steve Nelson’s operational oversight. I haven’t heard anyone on the council use Nelson’s salary in a sentence the way Morrell used Hayman’s. I haven’t seen a council member demand Nelson explain why a $300 million power complex is behind schedule during hurricane season while pump failures are actively flooding streets.

Hayman runs the agency. He should answer for that. But if the standard is “explain your performance or explain your paycheck,” it should apply to whoever is actually responsible for the thing that’s putting people’s houses underwater — not just to whichever executive has the biggest salary and the easiest name to attach to a soundbite.

Here’s the part nobody at City Hall wants to say out loud: New Orleans probably dodged a bullet this year, and it had nothing to do with anything the city fixed. The Atlantic went a record stretch without producing a single hurricane — the quietest start to a season since at least 1966, according to federal forecasters, thanks to a strong El Niño pushing storm formation toward the Pacific and choking the Atlantic with wind shear. Add in that the traditional peak of hurricane season has already passed, and it’s fair to say New Orleans got lucky.

Luck isn’t a plan. El Niño doesn’t run the Atlantic every year, and there’s no guarantee next season behaves the same way. If a storm had tested that unfinished substation this year, or does next year, nobody’s explained whether backup power actually holds under sustained pumping — or whether the city finds out live, with water rising in somebody’s living room. That’s the question a $500,000 salary should be answering. It’s not the one getting asked.

The 2028 Plan, in Plain Terms

Mayor Moreno laid out three stages. 2026: local control, already enacted. Between now and 2027, SWBNO shares functions, assets and administrative operations with the city, rewrites its bylaws, and figures out sustainable funding. Then in 2028: full integration as a city department.

The mechanics are already moving. Jonathan Stewart replaced Moreno as board president and says he’ll “put the priority of the residents first.” A transition officer is due Oct. 1. A transition report is due Nov. 15. Board meetings move to council chambers, twice a month instead of quarterly. Public Works will even start temporarily paving streets after SWBNO digs them up, so residents stop staring at open trenches for months.

Moreno wants this to move fast: “I think that the people of this city are expecting something to happen quickly.” She’s probably right about the expectation. Nobody’s said much about whether speed gets you a working power complex, or just a faster reorganization.

A Broke Landlord Doesn’t Fix a Struggling Tenant

Here’s my problem with the whole plan. SWBNO’s failures this year weren’t failures of governance structure. Nobody flooded because the board reported quarterly instead of bi-monthly. Nobody’s water bill got messed up because SWBNO was independent instead of a city department. The pumps failed because the power behind them isn’t finished, and the billing system failed because nobody fixed the billing system. Moving the org chart doesn’t touch either one.

And here’s the part that should worry every ratepayer in this city: New Orleans is broke. The city is staring down a projected nine-figure shortfall for next year’s budget, and it’s already raising the sanitation fee and weighing a property-tax roll forward just to keep the lights on at City Hall. That’s the government SWBNO is being asked to merge into by 2028 — an agency that already couldn’t find the money to finish a $300 million power complex on schedule, folded into a landlord that can’t balance its own books either.

A broke city doesn’t make a struggling utility stronger. It makes SWBNO one more line item competing against sanitation trucks, parking enforcement and drainage pumps for the same shrinking pot, with council members who’ve shown they’d rather grill a salary than fund a substation. What SWBNO actually needs is the opposite of what’s being built: real independence from that kind of political pressure, and a funding source that doesn’t rise and fall with the city’s mood in a given budget year. Oversight, yes — the council should have exactly the power it gained on Aug. 1. But oversight and ownership aren’t the same thing, and absorbing SWBNO into a cash-strapped city department risks trading one dysfunction for another.

What Would Actually Prove This Works

Not a transition report. Not a new title on Jonathan Stewart’s business card. The West Power Complex finished, on a real date, at a real cost, before New Orleans has to rely on luck again. Pump failures that stop happening. A billing system residents can trust. And a funding stream for SWBNO that doesn’t depend on whatever’s left in a city budget that’s already short nine figures. If SWBNO becomes a city department in 2028 and none of that has changed, the city will have spent two years reorganizing a chart instead of fixing a utility — and done it by handing a struggling agency to a landlord who can’t pay its own bills either.

Hold the council to a real standard, not a symbolic one. If Randy Hayman’s salary is fair game, so is every executive whose project is actually behind schedule. And if oversight is worth taking, so is the harder question: whether SWBNO should be pulled closer to a government in deficit, or built up as something strong and independent enough that no mayor, no council and no budget crisis can starve it the next time money gets tight. Accountability that only points at a paycheck isn’t accountability. It’s a press conference.

About the author: Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and a longtime voice on New Orleans civic and political affairs.

Related: Keep Politics Out of the SWB | Sewerage and Water Board—Administered Train Wreck

Jeff Thomas

Publisher — Black Source Media Jeff Thomas Publisher • Opinion Columnist •  New Orleans Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades. His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands. He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had. Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know. They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead. Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans? The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It. The Failure of Mitch Landrieu

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