Days before this past Halloween, Aidan Girod received a frightening note atop her water bill: “FINAL NOTICE.” The letter said Girod had three weeks to pay her outstanding balance before JXN Water would turn off her tap. 

At the start of the year, the north Jackson waitress received a $2,000 statement that included the several previous months she hadn’t gotten a bill for. As the utility revamps its historically plagued billing system, residents throughout the city have recently received an invoice for the first time in months, if not years. 

Girod, a mother to three young children, agreed to send $300 a month as part of a payment plan. Then in September, she received a bill again charging her $2,000, which JXN Water told her was due to a leak. But a plumber, to whom Girod paid $180, said they couldn’t find it. 

She said a second plumber also couldn’t find a leak. After one of her dozens of phone calls with the utility, JXN Water applied a credit to her bill, although it wasn’t clear to Girod how they decided on the amount. Then in October, she received two water bills, including the one with a final notice, that showed two different balances.

Months later, she still isn’t sure how much she owes, whether she has a leak, or if the utility is getting ready to shut her water off. 

“It has been very stressful,” said Girod, who said she’s had to skip paying other expenses to afford her water bill. “I have a 3-month-old daughter, I’ve given birth during all of this. A lot of that strain has been on simply making sure I have running water for my children.”

Ted Henifin, whom residents, business leaders and public officials have credited with rescuing Jackson’s water system from its darkest moments, says his hands are tied. JXN Water, the third-party utility he runs, needs a surge in revenue to keep afloat, and it needs to come soon. 

But procuring those funds, Henifin admitted, is all the more complicated in a city with a strained relationship between its water supply and residents, many of whom haven’t trusted what comes out of their faucets or what shows up on their bills for years. 

Just last month, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived a class-action lawsuit by residents against Jackson, alleging the city misrepresented the water’s safety after detecting levels of lead over the legal limit in 2015.

In the first two years after he took over in 2022, Henifin knew he needed a proof of concept for residents to buy in. In that time, JXN Water resolved widespread pressure issues, winterized a treatment plant that succumbed to recent cold snaps, and repaired hundreds of sewer line failures. Also, for the first time in a decade, Jackson’s system is in compliance with all federal drinking water requirements, the utility said recently, including the lingering lead violation. 

While residents praised the utility for its work, they soon learned it came with a high cost. This spring, JXN Water announced it had exhausted $150 million in funds from Congress set aside for daily upkeep of the system, which includes paying staff and routine maintenance. 

The utility is a few years away from sustaining itself financially, Henifin projects, and reaching that point means both increasing monthly bills and more aggressively pursuing unpaid balances. With a collection rate of about 70% – far below the national average of over 90% – JXN Water is losing over a million dollars a month. 

“We figured we’d get around to the billing at some point,” Henifin said in a recent interview at his Belhaven office. “Unfortunately the timing between running through the ($150 million of) federal funds and us getting to the billing weren’t exactly aligned.

“So we’re finding the need to get the billing done and collections up faster than we would’ve liked. But I still don’t think we would’ve done it any differently. You got to get the water system and sewer working before you can start beating on people about paying their bill.”

In September, JXN Water shut off water to nearly 1,800 accounts, and Henifin said he expected that number to be higher in October. Based on those counts, the utility has turned off service to roughly 10% of Jacksonians in 2025 alone. 

One of those ratepayers, Dominique Grant, had no idea when she would catch up on her past due balance. A single mother of three, Grant recently fell behind after not receiving a bill for two years, she said. JXN Water told her to make a down payment of $1,900, half of her total balance, to initiate a payment plan, Grant said. 

After she didn’t come up with the money, instead prioritizing bills like her mortgage and car loan, the utility shut off her water in October. 

“I have to ask myself, am I going to take my whole check and pay this water bill, or spread it out to pay my car note, insurance, light bill, mortgage,” said Grant, a case manager at a local hospital. “Unless I take out a loan, I just don’t have $1,900 to give them.”

Between bathing and meals, Grant said she spent over $100 a week on bottled water for her family, or about what JXN Water charges her for a whole month. 

Henifin and other local officials referenced  a “culture of nonpayment” in Jackson that spread after the city installed a faulty metering system from Siemens in 2013. Since then, residents became accustomed to inconsistent and inaccurate billing. Amid metering issues and the COVID-19 pandemic, city officials forewent water shutoffs for much of the past decade. 

With that track record in mind, JXN Water in 2023 proposed a billing system based on property values so customers would see the same amount every month. The state Legislature, though, passed a law blocking the idea soon after. 

Henifin also set up a discount on water bills for homes that receive food benefits through the federal SNAP program. But a recent court ruling blocked JXN Water from automatically applying the discount because of privacy laws. Henifin recently estimated fewer than 600 accounts receive the discount, which is about $30 a month. 

About 11,000 homes in Jackson, or nearly one in five, receive SNAP benefits, according to Census data, which means just 5% of eligible customers are receiving the water discount. 

Since the utility began its widespread shutoffs, both officials and residents have increasingly spoken out against JXN Water, citing a lack of affordability in a city where more than a quarter live below the poverty line. Heightening those tensions is a pending proposal to increase rates, which the utility says would increase the average bill by 12%.

At a recent court hearing, City Attorney Drew Martin panned the utility for not sooner considering its revenue and billing strategy, leading to steeper rate hikes that are tougher for residents to swallow. In October, the Jackson City Council voted to recommend reversing the 2022 order putting Henifin in charge of Jackson’s water system, in large part because of recent shut offs and billing disputes. 

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate, who appointed Henifin as third-party manager, has not acknowledged the city’s vote. Wingate did, though, order an injunction against Henifin’s recent attempt to push through the rate increase without the judge’s approval. Wingate said he would make a ruling on the increase no sooner than Dec. 19. 

Sitting with Mississippi Today in his brightly lit office, Henifin stood firm on the high bill amounts that Jacksonians have contested over the past year, even the ones that somehow tallied into the tens of thousands. Rep. Fabian Nelson, a Democrat whose district includes Jackson, recently submitted letters to Wingate from residents with bills as high as $70,000. 

With new meters at nearly every property, the manager was confident the utility had accurate readings of customers’ usage. In most cases with abnormal balances, JXN Water tells the resident they have a leak. 

While some, such as Girod in north Jackson, hired plumbers who dispute the diagnosis, Henifin doesn’t budge. JXN Water can tell there’s a leak, he said, simply by looking at a meter and seeing the consumption run up continuously throughout the day. 

Henifin suspected a number of residents have “slab leaks” under their home’s foundation, which the average plumber may not be able to find. That’s why the utility now recommends specific contractors for customers to call, he said.

On the customer service side, Henifin conceded there’s much room for improvement, saying residents too often leave phone calls with inconsistent answers. In addition to better training, he’s hoping to have more capacity for in-person appointments, a service JXN Water recently opened at the city’s Medical Mall. 

“People seem to forget we weren’t born a fully functional utility,” Henifin said. “ We were born out of no utility, essentially, and had to create everything along the way. 

“We (first) focused on getting the infrastructure to deliver water, get the sewer to stay in the ground. And now we get into the customer service experience and the billing. There’s nowhere to go but up.”

Yet in the meantime, residents and landlords who either can’t afford their bills or get answers through the call center are left with few options if they want to keep their water on. 

Jennifer Welch, a property manager in Jackson who sits on the city’s newly created Housing Task Force, criticized JXN Water over limited transparency. Welch and other landlords, who in some cases went two or three years without receiving a bill, have tried to ask the utility for clarity around their accounts but received little response, she said. 

“I have reached out to (Henifin) personally to let him know I have real concerns about the billing department,” said Welch, who said she’s met with Henifin throughout his time in Jackson. “He’s downplaying (the billing issue). I’ve just talked to too many people who are struggling.”

A group of nonprofits, including Forward Justice, the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, and the ACLU of MS, argued in court filings that JXN Water has shown little flexibility in its shutoff process, especially for residents who simply aren’t able to make down payments on the large debts they’ve accumulated after years of not receiving bills.

“The threat of losing water service cannot make people quickly find money they don’t have, unless it comes at the expense of forgoing other essential needs like food and medicine,” the groups wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to Wingate.

During a recent hearing at the Capitol, Democratic Sen. Sollie Norward said a woman in his Jackson district recently received a $20,000 water bill. While JXN Water allows customers to enter into payment plans, its policy requires customers with debt to make an initial down payment beforehand.

After forgiving some of the owed balance, the utility asked the woman to pay $4,000, the senator said. But that was still higher than she could afford, Norwood said, and eventually JXN Water shut her water off.

“I don’t know how she got there, and she doesn’t know how she got there,” he said. “Yes, shutting off water gets attention, but it also creates other problems.”

Grant, the single mother whose water was disconnected, cobbled together the $1,900 she needed for a down payment and, after four weeks, finally got her tap back running. After feeling the toll of not having service, she decided to take out a small loan and put off other bills to come up with the money. Still, Grant said JXN Water has unfair expectations of residents’ financial flexibility, especially when many had no idea what they owed for months or years.

“They need to just have a better grasp on things,” she said. “Nobody has thousands of dollars just sitting around to spare.”