After water main breaks, Mayor Helena Moreno puts S&WB on frontburner
By Blake Paterson
Source: The Times-Picayune | NOLA.com
March 17, 2026
Mayor Helena Moreno didn’t plan to spend so much time on the Sewerage & Water Board so early in her tenure.
When she chaired her first S&WB meeting in January, she remained mostly tight-lipped about her vision for the agency. And in an interview a week later at Washington Mardi Gras, Moreno said that people demanding changes at the S&WB and other agencies needed to manage their expectations.
“People are like ‘What’s the big reform for Sewerage and Water Board?’ and ‘What about the Regional Transit Authority?’” Moreno said. “I’m like, ‘Okay, let me just figure out how to get all the lights on’.”
But Moreno’s plans were scrambled on March 9 at 2:54 a.m., when she woke up to a text message from the S&WB’s interim general superintendent, alerting her to a major water main break Uptown.
It was the third such break in less than two months, flooding cars and homes and shuttering businesses. On Thursday, another water main burst open, flooding the area near Tulane University as the campus’ popular Book Festival was underway.
The recent spate of breaks has forced Moreno, who took office on Jan. 12, to confront head-on the issues at the S&WB, including its aging, decrepit water mains, which have seen less attention in recent years than have its drainage pumps and power.
So far, Moreno has sought to use her position as mayor to put pressure on S&WB Executive Director Randy Hayman to move more quickly. She publicly criticized his leadership last week after he failed to provide her with specifics on a plan to prevent future breaks. And she sent in Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Steve Nelson — the former S&WB general superintendent — to help Hayman’s team figure out next steps.
Hayman in a video posted on social media Thursday detailed several immediate steps to address leaks and said additional funding would be needed. A plan the S&WB issued late Monday suggested it could cost up to $680 million to replace the system’s oldest water mains.
At the same time, Moreno is seeking approval from the state Legislature for a proposal that would give the City Council more control over the S&WB, a reform she argues is needed to make the agency more accountable.
“I cannot have this be the norm,” Moreno said Friday. “That’s why all of us have to come together — me, the Legislature, the City Council — to force [the S&WB] to come up with a plan.”
Silas Lee, a New Orleans-based pollster and political advisor, said Moreno should have the support of residents on her plan to give the council more control of the S&WB, pointing to the agency’s dismal approval ratings.
“People want accountability and improvement in services,” Lee said.
Governance an issue
Moreno said that under its current governing structure, the S&WB isn’t accountable to anyone.
“I don’t have control over this particular agency,” Moreno said.
The mayor serves as president of the 11-member board, while a City Council member holds another seat. The board also consists of five citizen members from each council district, nominated by local colleges and universities and appointed by the mayor.
Two representatives of the city’s Board of Liquidation – City Debt and two customer advocates, also appointed by the mayor, round it out. Its funding is determined by the City Council, and it is regulated by state laws.
The Bureau of Governmental Research, a New Orleans-based good government group, agrees that the governance is flawed. Either the S&WB needs to be abolished and folded completely into city government, or it needs far greater autonomy, BGR wrote in a 2023 report.
“There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but nobody has direct and influential oversight,” said Becky Mowbray, BGR’s CEO.
Board members serve staggered, four-year terms, and most of the current members were appointed by former Mayor LaToya Cantrell. A lone Moreno appointee, Jonathan Stewart, is up for consideration at the council’s Governmental Affairs Committee this week, to replace Janet Howard as the Council District B representative.
The council has veto power over S&WB rate hikes and must sign off on any tax proposal before it goes to voters. A state law passed in 2022 also gave the council authority to mediate billing disputes. But the council doesn’t have a say in how the S&WB spends its money. The council sent a letter to the S&WB Thursday requesting a detailed report on all water main leaks and repairs over the last year and its policy for notifying customers of water shutoffs.
Moreno’s proposal for the S&WB will be hashed out in House Bill 573, authored by state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, R-Lakeview.
The language in the bill is expected to morph throughout the session, but Moreno said the goal is the same: give the council more control over the S&WB.
“Bottom line: There would be an entity that could finally, in a very transparent way, bring them to the table, have them show up, and they would have to then ultimately start performing better,” Moreno said.
Moreno spoke by phone with Gov. Jeff Landry on Wednesday before meeting with his staff in Baton Rouge. She said she doesn’t expect pushback from state leaders, who she characterized as tired of hearing about the S&WB’s woes every spring during the legislative session.
New leadership?
Moreno, on Friday, wouldn’t say whether she thinks Hayman is the right person to lead the S&WB. But she’s keeping close tabs on his performance.
“This is a very important and high-priority situation for me. So how it’s handled by the executive director is something that I’m really going to be watching,” she said.
The former chief executive of the Philadelphia Water Department, Hayman was selected to lead the S&WB in April in a split board vote.
Moreno said she expects city agencies to work with urgency and when there’s a “problem persisting, do all possible to find solutions, to try to fix it.”
She said she didn’t see that out of the S&WB, at least initially.
She made those frustrations clear last week when she took the extraordinary step of sharing an email exchange that she had with Hayman, blasting his lack of a game plan as unacceptable.
“We can’t move forward on fixing this problem until we get a very specific plan, and also a very specific funding request,” Moreno said.
After the first water main break in January, Moreno said she was miffed that her own communications team had to explain what happened to the public.
“There was silence from the Sewerage and Water Board,” she said.
Since then, Moreno said she’s seen improvement among the S&WB’s communication team. She also gave high marks to the S&WB’s interim superintendent, Kaitlin Tymrak, for her efforts to keep the Mayor’s Office and council members in the know. (Tymrak was the one who woke Moreno up via text on Monday.)
But Moreno said Hayman needs to do more to keep city and state leaders abreast of what’s going on.
“Mr. Hayman still needs to work on that, on keeping us in the loop,” Moreno said.