Susan DuBose recaps Tuesday's BWWB meeting

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Job Mounts filling in for jt Well. On Tuesday, Shelby
County residents got to hear from the new voice of
the regional Waterboard as we saw them speak with their
new representative, Jeff Brumlow. Joining us now is a state representative,
Susan Dubos, who was also there at the town hall meeting.
In fact, she kind of put the whole thing together

(00:20):
and Susan, what can we expect from the new waterboard?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hey, John, Yes, Look, I was so happy to be
able to sponsor this town hall this year because two
years ago we had a town hall and it was
all about the problems of the Birmingham Waterworks and what
my constituents were having to tolerate. It has been unconscionable
and all the users of Birmingham water Works, the rates,

(00:46):
the customer service has been unconscionable for over a decade.
So it was wonderful to be able to announce some
good news and we did this legislatively while we were
in session. At the end of session this year in May.
As a matter of fact, we appointed, or we allowed
to be appointed, a brand new water Works Board which

(01:08):
is going to be representative of the actual users. So
Jeff Brumlow, who is Shelby County's appointee to the board,
was there to explain it all to us, and we
all learned so much, and I know my residents left
feeling hopeful. But you know, Birmingham, the City of Birmingham
has been controlling the water Works Board this whole time,

(01:29):
which makes no sense. Birmingham does not own the water
Works Board, although they tried to with Shenan again at
the last minute to the city for one dollar they tried,
which just goes to show the true integrity of the
folks we had on that board. But anyway, the legislature
changed the makeup of the board so that it would

(01:50):
go from nine members to only seven members, and that
the City of Birmingham would only appoint too out of
those seven members, which is representative actually of the way
the water is used. So two members are appointed by
the City of Birmingham. Shelby County gets an appointee, Blood
County gets an appointee, the governor, the Lieutenant governor gets appointees.

(02:14):
So it's not way down with appointees from the City
of Birmingham. And we have excellent professionals now on this board.
It makes sense to do it this way because look,
only twenty five percent of the users of that water
reside in the city of Birmingham. They're trying to act
like they control the majority of the users. Not true.

(02:35):
We actually have the majority of the users live in
the city of Hoover. And you know, they didn't even
get an appointee. But that's okay because we have appointees
based on county and I think it's going to work
out just great. But it is going to be a
drastic change. Look, Jeff Brumlow reported, how you know, they've
only been on job six weeks, this new board, but

(02:57):
they are digging deep into the history and things that
are going on. They have hired new attorneys, they fired
old attorneys. They are getting audits, and they are going
to figure out what's going on and why these rights
are so high and what can be done to fix
it well.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
And one of the things I'm excited to see with
this change is it always seemed every interaction I've ever
had with the water, with the Birmingham water Works, is
it always seemed like it was a very US first
kind of thing, like like the not the rape payers
had nothing to do with what they're going to They're
going to go ahead and run things as they see fit.
They're going to use the money to give themselves a

(03:36):
party boat on the lake, They're going to use the
money for these expensive meetings, all these things, and we
really don't care about the customer at all. And what
I'm hoping that we see from this new board is
a customer first approach, where we the rapeayers, the ones
that are making it happen for them financially, that we
are going to be considered first rather than an afterthought.
Oh yeah, those those losers who want their water atturney

(03:59):
little kick the meta eventually.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Exactly, they're inconvenient of water users. Well, and that's exactly right,
And that was exactly mister Brumlow's point. The focus is
going to be on the rate payers and the rates.
We should not have users that cannot afford to stay
in their homes because the rates are too high. And
that's exactly what we had. We have. We had residents
having to give up their home because they couldn't afford

(04:22):
a seven hundred dollars a month payment. Utterly ridiculous. You know,
the state of Alabama has ten percent of the whole
nation's water supply in our state. There is no shortage
of water in the state of Alabama. Water should not
be expensive in the state of Alabama. And when you
hear these heartbreaking stories, people on a fixed income happen
to give up their home because they can't afford water,

(04:45):
or they have to choose between groceries. They have to
give up groceries, or they have to give up prescriptions
because they have to pay an outrageous water bill. It's heartbreaking. Well,
and Elena is.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's not just it's not just the water in terms
of the you're paying for the water. It's the fact
that a lot of times you don't get a bill
for two or three months, and then you get a
bill for like say, I don't know, fourteen hundred dollars,
fourteen thousand dollars, and there are arguing us. Not like
you can go to the other water company. You just
got to pay it.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
It's you don't have a choice. They are a monopoly.
Why do they if they're doing a good job, why
are they paying fifty thousand dollars a month for lobbyists
to make themselves look good. No, you don't need that,
do your job, get rid of your lobbyists, focus on
the customer, and you know, there's there's so many problems
that have been going on. We're just now they're just

(05:34):
now six weeks into this new board, so no telling
what they're going to come up with. They've hired auditors,
they have the Board of Public Examiners coming in to
review everything. But you're right, the focus should absolutely be
on the right payer. And you know you can't when
you have Birmingham Waters or whoever your water company is,

(05:54):
they're monopoly. You can't leave and making that the choice.
So we have high expectations for this board. We have
the best experts on this board. I'm really just excited
about what we were able to do this legislatively. We
have been working for years on this. You know, I
have to commend Senator Dan Roberts, he led this in

(06:17):
the Senate, and Representative Jim Clarnes led this for us
in the House, and all of us in Shelby County
and Jefferson County work together to make sure this legislation
got through. We had to pass it as statewide legislation,
you know, in effects a five county central area here
in central Alabama. But we had to pass this state wide,

(06:38):
so we had to let all of our lawmakers know
how important this was. And you know, people in other
parts of the state don't understand what we're going through,
but we got it through thanks to great leadership, and.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Susan, thank you for your leadership. I know you're going
to keep an eye on this and it's going to
be we're going to be watching because you know, we
put these people in now we expect some results from them,
and I know you're going to be one of the
ones who are going to be keeping an eye on it,
holding their feet to the fire. Susan de Bow's representative
from Shelby County, thank you so much for joining us
this morning on Alabama's Morning News