The Alabama Senate could vote as early as Thursday on a bill that would wipe out the current Birmingham Water Works Board of Directors and restructure how board members are appointed, giving the city of Birmingham much less representation. If the Senate approves the bill, the House of Representatives could consider it next week.

Bill sponsors said the change is needed because of customer complaints, high rates and the possibility of a catastrophic failure. Opponents of the bill called it a hostile takeover of a local asset.

“The state has no right to rob the people of Birmingham of our resources,” Georgia Morgan Blair, a resident of Birmingham for 57 years, said before a town hall meeting state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham and a candidate for mayor, held Tuesday evening at A.H. Parker High School. “They are getting in the business of micromanagement, and it’s unfair to the citizens of Birmingham.”

The Senate Committee on County and Municipal Government on Tuesday gave its approval to Senate Bill 330 in a 6-3 vote along party lines. This bill was introduced by Sens. Dan Roberts, R-Mountain Brook; Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills; and Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville.

The legislation would cut the number of board members Birmingham leaders appoint from six to one.

Currently, Birmingham’s mayor appoints two directors, the Birmingham City Council selects four, the Jefferson County Mayors Association appoints one, the Shelby County Commission chooses one and the Blount County Commission selects one.

Under the new bill, one director each would be appointed by the mayor, the state’s lieutenant governor, the Jefferson County Commission president, the governing body of each county in which a BWWB-owned major reservoir is principally located, and by the commission in the county where the second-largest number of water customers reside.

All new members would have to have a general business background, and members appointed by the Birmingham mayor and the lieutenant governor also would have to have financial backgrounds. The director the Jefferson County Commission president appoints would need an engineering background. The bill would increase board members’ pay from $1,000 per month to $2,000 per month.

Roberts told the committee the aim of the bill is to put together a professional board with relevant experience.

“Failure in the management of water systems will lead to unreasonably high rates that oppress residents and are barriers to economic development,” Roberts told the committee. “It is vital that we improve the current situation here.”

He said the Birmingham Water Works Board is not updating and maintaining its infrastructure as it should. “You’re having assets that are wasting because we use money for other things,” including attorneys’ fees and marketing firms, Roberts said, adding that he’s seen BWWB spending of $50,000 to $80,000 per month on marketing.

Mac Underwood, who began serving as Birmingham Water Works’ general manager for a second time in February, spoke at the town hall meeting and the committee’s public hearing, saying BWW has had problems but the current board and a management team the board put in place last year have made great strides toward solving them.

Underwood highlighted a reduction in billing errors from 10,000 per month to less than 500 per month, the creation of an assistant general manager of customer care position, and ongoing capital improvement projects including a switch to automated-meter-reading infrastructure, stabilization of Lake Purdy Dam, a major water source for the utility, and pipeline replacements.

“I, like our chairwoman, ask that you give us a little bit more time,” Underwood told the Senate committee. “We made a tremendous effort in improving in the operations of the system.”

Underwood said 91.78% of Birmingham Water Works’ customers are in Jefferson County, 8% are in Shelby County and the remaining 2% to 3% are split among three other counties. Forty-one percent of customers are in the city of Birmingham, he said.

Opponents of the bill, including members of the public and senators who spoke against it Tuesday, said Birmingham and Jefferson County’s representation on the board it would create would not align with those percentages.

“You did not have to change the makeup of the board to diminish the influence of the city of Birmingham and Jefferson County to get those professionals that you mentioned,” Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, said to Roberts during the Senate committee meeting.

In addition to not reflecting the demographics of the Water Works’ customers, the restructured board would not reflect the historical relationship between the city of Birmingham and the Water Works, Birmingham City Council President Darrell O’Quinn told the Senate committee.

“It does not reflect the historical investment of the city of Birmingham’s role in, at various times, owning the water works and having a vested interest,” O’Quinn said. “We want all the reforms to happen at the Water Works Board and want to see them perform better. But what’s being proposed is fundamentally opposed to the interest of the city of Birmingham, and, again, represents a taking.”

The city of Birmingham purchased the water system in 1951 and established an independent board to govern its operation. Since 2001, the Birmingham Water Works Board has been a public corporation that owns and manages the Birmingham Water Works utility.

Speakers Say Fear of Water Quality Threats Unfounded

At the town hall meeting, some speakers took issue with Roberts’ statements that Birmingham Water Works customers could experience water issues like those faced in Jackson, Mississippi, and Detroit, Michigan.

“If you look at our water quality report, it tells you that Birmingham has some of the best water in the nation,” Underwood said. “I know you might have a disruption from time to time, but when you look at the quality of the water, it meets all ADEM (Alabama Department of Environmental Management) regulations.”

Some opponents of the bill questioned whether it is really about current conditions at the Water Works, given that similar bills have been introduced in the Legislature going back decades. Most of those bills have not gained traction. Legislation Waggoner sponsored in 2015 did become law, expanding the board from five to nine members and adding seats for representatives of Shelby and Blount counties.

Waggoner said he introduced legislation then because constituents were calling him with complaints.

“The complaints went away for few years,” Waggoner told the Senate committee. “I’m receiving the same complaints today, primarily billing and service complaints, that I received 10 years ago. If I had received no complaints, I would not be standing here today.”

Givan said she has had concerns about issues at BWW, but taking the water system out of the hands of Birmingham is dangerous.

“I don’t know of any utility in this state that has not had issues,” she said. “I have not seen one time where there was an attempt to take over Alabama Power. I have not seen anyone attempt to take over AT&T. I have not seen one attempt for anyone to take over the gas company. I have not seen one attempt to take over waste water, not even when the sewer rates in this area went so high.”

William Harden Jr., vice president of Birmingham’s Citizens Advisory Board, said the Prichard water utility – which has failing infrastructure and has repeatedly experienced raw sewage spills, and which is under a federal investigation that has produced seven indictments – has not received the kind of state attention Birmingham Water Works is getting.

“How can they direct that under the premise of, we need to clean up the water system, when you have corruption and people going to federal prison for a water system that’s in lower Alabama and that not come up in conversation?” Harden asked during the town hall meeting.

The only speaker who didn’t oppose the bill during the town hall meeting, which drew a crowd of about 40 despite inclement weather, was community activist Harry “Traveling Shoes” Turner.

“This board have so many self-inflicted wounds, until the people tired of getting hurt, tired of you not answering the phone, tired of you making these outrageous two-minute speeches,” Turner said, referring to a recent change to the Water Works’ public-speaker policy. “And tonight you said you rescinded it so it’s three minutes. Well, boy, keep fighting, but it’s a bigger fight than what you think, because the board itself have not given people reason to stand with you.”

BWWB Pledges to Rescind Speaker Policy; Ethics Complaint Filed Against Chairwoman

The bill’s introduction last week came on the heels of the board adopting a restrictive public-speaker policy it has now pledged to rescind and shortly before an ethics complaint was filed against the board’s chairwoman, Tereshia Huffman, on Monday.

The speaker policy passed April 9 requires potential speakers to register within 24 hours of the BWWB meeting agenda’s being published and limiting addresses to two minutes.

The ethics complaint involves three of Huffman’s votes on funding through the BWW’s Community Education Program. Relatives of Huffman’s were involved in two of the initiatives that received funding and she did not disclose the connections, and initiatives funded under two of those votes did not fulfill a required educational component, the complaint alleges.

William Muhammad, a former board member who was forcefully removed from a BWW board meeting while making public comments in February, sided with the board at the Senate committee hearing and town hall meeting.

“I’m the only person I know, out of all these rabble rousers around here, that was dragged out of the Water Works,” Muhammad said. “I’m just saying that to say this: I am the No. 1 supporter of the Birmingham Water Works as far as it belonging to the people of Birmingham. All these other things we got to put aside.”

Givan encouraged town hall attendees to call and email state representatives and to spread word about the bill and how quickly it is moving through the Legislature. A member of the public asked if a group could get together to go to the State House in Montgomery on Tuesday, and Givan said buses could be arranged if enough people were willing to go. She also encouraged neighborhood association presidents who were at the town hall to speak out against the bill.