Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans

93 year old mother almost died waiting in that dump. Contacted a friend and will begin a lawsuit.

This review is for the repair crew and the leak line. I called in a leaking meter in front of my house and my neighbors mid morning one day and by 4pm the same day they were on my block fixing the issue. They corrected both within an hour or so had fixed both issues. They did not fix the concrete but the S&WB has a separate crew for that. All I can say is thank you to Mr. Jamar Hill and his crew for an excellent and quick job.

It’s like the NOPD without the power to arrest. So basically they’re completely worthless.

I had to choose one star because it doesn’t go any lower! With all the technology in the world, why can’t SWB issue a boil water advisory within 1 – 2 hours of discovering the problem. Today’s problem was discovered in early morning hours but not put out as public notice to boil water until 10 a.m. This is not the first time either. At 10 a.m., most people have had coffee, breakfast, showered, brushed teeth ALREADY! I’m guessing if we are not already dead or in the hospital, the water was safe this a.m. at 8. The bureaucracy at SWB needs to be notified when something like this power outage happens to start the process of issuing a boil notice. Scroll it on TV, get a FB page so you can put notices out like that. Do something instead of waiting hours! I don’t really care if supervisors/​bosses have to be called at 2 a.m., get the notice out sooner!

I asked that the water be disconnected when I moved, and yes, they did turn it off. However, they then turned it back on for the next tenants in my name again for which I received a bill.
Next, I opened up a new account and somehow my online payment went to the closed account. I asked that the payment please be applied to my CURRENT OPEN ACCOUNT. I was told no problem then got a call back a week or so later (now that the CURRENT bill was overdue) saying that her boss told her they could not transfer it unless I came down to the OFFICE and PROVE that I paid it to the wrong account. I have sent them their emails they sent me proving it was paid to my previous CLOSED account, the lady on the phone even acknowledged to exact amount of credit in my closed account. I asked if they could at least send me a check for the credit so I could avoid going to the office and waiting in line, but she said she had direct orders that the only way I could get that money was to go to the office. ARGGGGHHHHH! Then I read the article… tried calling again and was on hold for 30 minutes of silence until I finally gave up. Bunch of crooks!

After reading the other very negative reviews I was not looking forward to interfacing with the sewer and water board of New Orleans! There is no getting around this step. The house we are renovating has not had a water meter for over a year. It has now been completely re-​plumbed so an inspection is due tomorrow.
The office is in or near the art/​warehouse district which is undergoing a lot of street and building renovations so there are blocked streets and unpaved areas but that’s progress; improvements are being made.
There was an information desk in the lobby with a person who asked what services we needed. He directed us to the waiting area where we took a number. When my number was called I followed a woman to her work station and presented the documents listed on their website. The «act of sale» papers included the legal description but not the street address of the property. «Oh, great, I thought, I’m up the creek, won’t be able to get this done today.» But the woman just worked around it and acquired the necessary information through tax records or some other valid documentation. Whew!
She made copies of my paper work and was very helpful answering all my questions about scheduling of the inspection, trash services and so on. Sure, this process required me to show up in person with documentation but it was not the nightmare experience I was led to expect given the other comments here. I’d say just have your papers and be civilized and you will have no problems. Every public service requires you to jump through certain hoops. This was just one of them and not bad at all.
While I was taking care of business my husband was having a pleasant conversation with one of the other employees in the waiting area. All in all it was a good experience and we even popped into a few galleries on our walk back to the car.

I was overcharged by $ 700 Plus for one month and they still have not corrected anything or returned my calls. This billing is wrong and they are now charging me more for sewerage than water. Anyone know who I can complain to at the City? Other than the the Board?
thanks
Robert
Bywater

This place is a toxic, oozing, dung pile in the septic tank of antiquity. There is a web site. An account can not be opened online. There is a phone number. An account can not be opened over the phone. An account can not be opened without remitting excessive physical copies of documentation by fax or in person to their offices. There is a contact number for emergencies. Service can neither be turned on nor restored (even if the shutoff was THEIR ERROR) without paying someone to sit at your building all day to wait for the nincompoop personnel they send out to not show up as promised.
They have a customer service office that answers phones during banking hours. I don’t know why they bother. The only thing that can be accomplished over the phone is having poorly trained, angry front line staff bark their policies at you and explain that nobody, even their supervisors, can do anything for you unless you take time away from your life, show up at their offices (with no public parking), and wait in line like a cow in a slaughterhouse queue. They do have the budget to ALWAYS have armed security standing right there in their offices because they know just how inept and incompetent and infuriating it is to deal with their organization. The last time this agency did anything to improve any aspect of how any of it interacts with the public it is supposed to serve, it was probably paid for in confederate currency.
If you stumble into a desert, become dehydrated, suffer heatstroke, and are then trampled to death by a herd of rabid camels, you’ll be better off than if you ever need to darken this place’s doorstep.

If I could give negative stars, I would. Here is a breakdown of my last bill.
7.99 for water usage.
6.93 for water service charge.
10.21 for sewer volume charge.
25.85 sewer service charge.
24.00 city sanitation charge.
I wouldn’t have much of a problem paying the last two, but considering it took these guys almost SIX MONTHS to turn an underground leak into an above ground leak, wasting thousands of gallons of water. It took another 4 months for them to fix the above ground mess that they made, and still left a ton of garbage in the area from their «repair.» For the past four months, there has been another leak directly across the street. No sign of SWB anywhere.
It took 10 months to fix the first leak after writing them, my city council person, who ended up going to jail, and Bill Capo.

Recently moved to a new home. And so things like electricity and water has to be transferred to your name. As for the electricity all I had to do was turn on my computer and fill out the information and voila it was done and done professionally. And I was notified via e-​mail when the transfer took place. The initial deposit was just added to the first month’s bill.
As for the Sewerage and Water Board I had to personally go to their office on St. Joseph St. I also was required to produced the Act of Sale to a clerk to get the water on my name. And to pay upfront a hefty deposit. An Act of Sale is a public document but having to carry it around and to show my business to a clerk to pay to have water was a bit odd to me. Do people go around opening accounts to pay the water bill of other people? Is this such a problem that the S&WB must be vigilant to make sure you only want to pay a water bill for where you live?
So go down to St. Joseph St. and pick a number and wait your turn to get business taken care of.

What kind of Bzyantine agency forces you to take time away from your life just to receive water?
This place.
A $ 2 surcharge to pay by debit card?
I’ve seen old Geocities pages look more modern than their website. My God, just let some students re-​design your site for college credit.

I recently purchased a blighted property with my siblings in Mid-​City. We are historically renovating the property. We began plumbing the building and planned on replacing the existing water meter, which has not been updated since the house was originally built in 1910, with two new meters and new pipes that funnel to our water meters. I spoke to the House Connections department in SWBNO and she quoted the installation cost between $ 1,800 and $ 2,500. She explained that sometimes an installation can cost upwards of $ 5,000 for a meter installation, but we would only have to pay $ 2,500 at the most.
I received the estimate ten days later: $ 5,068.20. This was only for one meter and we would have to pay the whole amount. When I tried to understand why it was so drastically different from the other prices I was given, they explained that it is never the SWBNO’s policy to give clients average price estimates, even though two of her employees already had, and she referred me to master of maintenance.
The master of maintenance had very little insight as to how the water meter installation prices were actually determined. He said this was the SWBNO’s primary contractor’s domain: Fleming Construction. He said Fleming Construction set the prices and SWBNO followed suit. He tried to help to the best of his ability, but the reality was that he merely managed SWBNO’s contract with Fleming.
I called Jefferson Parish’s water board to see how much they charged for installing a one-​inch water meter. They charge a flat rate of $ 1,500. The city pays for the pipes on public property and the homeowner pays for the portion within their property line. I discovered that most municipalities across America operate in the same fashion (Chicago, Illinois, Tucson, Arizona), and some counties go as far as incur all of the costs for new meter installation, because they regard it as standard updating and maintenance of infrastructure. Other city’s water utilities provide thorough pricing schedules for different types of water meter installation scenarios. The pricing reasoning is well documented and fully accessible to the customer. This creates a predictable and fair planning environment.
SWBNO’s policy of expecting homeowners to foot the entire bill for maintenance and updates that should have already occurred stands in direct opposition to Mayor Landrieu and the City Council’s goal of fighting blight, fixing the condition of our deteriorating streets, and minimizing city operating costs.
Investors require a predictable and transparent city government. Most investors can absorb a certain amount of variable costs, but I doubt that after someone has purchased a home, and then secured a construction loan like we have, that they will be liquid enough to pay a little over $ 10,000 to partially subsidize a municipal service that should have been maintained. As a historic district, most of the Mid-​City housing stock boasts water meters from when the neighborhood was initially drained in the 1910’s. We later discovered that our existing meter was made of toxic lead.
If we ever hope to address the chronic blight that has pre-​dated 2005, then we must not penalize would-​be investors by forcing them to pay for the mistakes of a mismanaged bureaucracy. We must fairly and efficiently address our infrastructure while also mending the structural issues of the SWBNO that have culminated in this citywide crisis.
I am not an engineer, economist, or a city planner, but since no one in the SWBNO seems to hold these credentials either, I feel equally qualified in stating that updating the pipes in such a piece-​meal fashion will ultimately waste time and money for the city and Orleans Parish taxpayers.
In my subsequent dealings with the SWBNO I learned that it contracts out all of their engineering, maintenance, and pavement repairs to private contractors. The employees manning their offices have no immediate access to these contracts, making it impossible for home and business owners to coordinate reasonable time schedules for repairs and updates occurring on or near their properties.
As the city considers another price increase for the SWBNO’s services I believe we must seriously consider what services they actually provide. Much scrutiny has been directed towards the SWBNO’s Director Marcia St. Martin’s salary, pension plan, and performance as a director. They are well-​deserved critiques and must not be abandoned. Further inspection should also be directed toward the employees of the SWBNO. There are undoubtedly many hardworking and experienced individuals at the SWBNO, but I believe those who are none of those things outnumber them by a great majority.
The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans is not just another utility company. It is charged with working against extraordinary subsidence, functioning as a stopgap against disease spurred on by standing water, and keeping our city from drowning when it rains. We have to expect better.

After returning to rebuild in NOLA… I was not getting my SWB bills. My mail was being sent to Chicago where I had been for one month. I had put in a new address form once I returned to NOLA. I was living in MY own RV IN FRONT of my property while rebuilding. and was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. My water was turned off and no one knocked on my RV to tell me they were doing it… and I had t go to the SWB after that day’s chemo treatment to pay the bill. Sat there with my daugher for several hours nauseous… and got my bloated bill… which I paid. The employee was soooo snarky… HORRIBLE !!

So I used the website to change my mailing address and they closed my account! I went back to the website to check it out and links to change your address and close your account BOTH go to the same page! In addition to fantastic website design they also have let a small hole on the corner down from my house grow into a much larger hole that has been growing for TWO YEARS now despite repeated requests by everybody on the block to repair it! These clowns want to raise rates! The only way to fix this circus is to fire all these clowns and privatize the whole affair like they have in Jefferson Parish. They have been stealing all the money that was to be used for maintenance for years and now they want to go back and make us pay more to fix what they were supposed to have been fixing all these years. Out with the whole board and bring in competent people!

How anyone has given them more than one star I don’t know. (Sorry Allison)
Seriously, they are one confused agency. I so wish the efforts to privatize them had worked a couple of years ago. Not that I’m normally for privatization of public entities but anything would be better.
My favorite example of their insanity is that their was a leak (pre-​K) at Napoleon & Loyola for a good 3 months. The water was bubbling up into the street. When did the crew show up to repair the leak? On July 4^th. Can you say triple overtime?

Much like the rest of our local government, this is a completely broken agency. You can obviously point your finger at the basic infrastructure that this agency has to deal — an aged (not aging, aged — as in ancient) water system that was disintegrating DECADES ago. But it’s not the infrastructure’s fault that it’s so far removed from its former glory. Systems break, infrastructure runs aground, entropy is inevitable. It is the responsibility of the board to maintain and repair so that conditions never reach the point of complete breakdown. So pointing your finger at the water system is a waste of time.
This review is for the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. This is a review of the bureaucratic malaise that makes up the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. Whether you go in person or attempt to navigate their phone system, you will be met with complete and total antipathy. Understand that you’re dealing with individuals that have no incentive to go above and beyond whatever their individual job description may entail (and you’re lucky if they go that far). Questions are met with general, almost scripted non-​committal responses or forwarded on to another individual that will, in turn, continue to pass the buck further down the line. Even at the highest levels, ineptitude is the order of the day.
It doesn’t matter what department you deal with — be it billing, to report a broken pipe, etc. — you will deal with someone who cannot or will not help you. And why should they? Their supervisors are incompetent, and their job security is assured. All they have to do is sit at their desk all day, eat super-​sized fast food and despise you for interrupting them while they text the day away. And you get to pay them each month for the privilege.
So you can ignore this and go on reviewing which bars have the best mojitos, or you can write your own review on the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (and other agencies, for that matter). Shine a light on City Hall and its broken branches. This city is still broken and needs to be fixed. This is one way to do just that. Make the public servants accountable. Make them do their jobs. And at the end of the day, enjoy your mojito knowing you did your part to fix NOLA.

Pretty much at the bottom for handling customers and accounts. I recently had some changes to my account information and I found dealing with them as you would most companies (by phone or fax) is a waste of time. With the 50+ companies I deal with, this one is in the bottom 3. You generally need to go to the office itself and see to it that your needs are met. Which is an even bigger waste of time.
And then there’s the actual fixing of broken water lines throughout the city.

Ok, ok, I was a little spoiled. My dad was the superintendent of Purification for a bunch of years so if anything ever went wrong it got fixed. The streets department however, would let a small raft sized hole int he street sit until it was a volkswagon sized hole and not do anything about it. Dealing with them on the phone is kind of a nightmare, but they did turn my water on on time and did come fix a leak within good reason. But when you’re on a first name basis with the executive director, things get done. They’re not bad, but a little «special».

That there is no alternative to water in NOLA and we are required to use this utility in 2009 with its third world, 1982 technology will forever baffle me. Think TRON, insofar as era of computer equipment.
For the treat of treats, hang out in the 1^st floor waiting area some time whether you have a quandry or not. Scope out the «bill of rights» on the wall, but don’t make a stink! There’s security on premises for a reason, and that is the billing and service provided is NEVER wrong.