The Sewerage & Water Board’s huge operating budget and multi billion dollar capital program makes it as financially significant as the rest of city government combined. After five years of OIG reports that confirmed the S&WB;’s poor performance and wasteful and inefficient practices, I reaffirm the same recommendation I made in 2012: New Orleans needs to return the S&WB; to city control; the Sewerage & Water Department should report to the mayor like all the other departments. Oversight can then be improved through policy and citizens dissatisfied with the S&WB; could complain at the polls when they received poor services. The outcome would likely be well worth the effort. There is no risk in changing the status quo because independence has failed miserably for most of a century.
