Some St. Tammany residents taking complaints of brown, smelly water to Parish Council

Some St. Tammany residents are once again raising concerns about the quality and cost of water provided by a private utility company that supplies tens of thousands of customers in the parish, following a days-long boil advisory in a subdivision near Slidell last month.

The St. Tammany Parish Council on Thursday is expected to hear residents’ complaints about Central States Water Sources, which operates as Magnolia Water in Louisiana.

“The biggest issue is, there’s no transparency,” said Dwight Daigle, the vice-president of the Slidell-area Belair Homeowners Association, where some residents say they have at times experienced brown, smelly water since the company purchased the subdivision’s water system from Coast Waterworks in December 2019. The subdivision has 775 homes. 

An investor-owned water utility based in St. Louis, Central States Water Resources rehabilitates failing private water systems around the country, and has hundreds of thousands of customers.

In St. Tammany, which has numerous private water and sewerage systems, the company owns 30 water systems and 28 sewer systems, serving an estimated 62,000 customers.

After Belair’s primary well went down earlier this month, the company switched to a backup well and lost pressure during the transfer, which prompted the precautionary boil advisory on May 9, according to the company’s CEO, Josiah Cox.

The boil advisory was lifted on May 15 after water samples confirmed the absence of contaminants, Cox said.  

Responding to residents’ concerns that boil advisories had become more frequent since Magnolia took over, Cox said his company is vigilant about issuing water boil advisories, which can lead some to believe they are happening more frequently.

“We’ve radically changed the quality of water,” Cox said of Belair’s water, adding that before his company took over the system was overchlorinated, not flushed and not tested for byproducts of disinfection.

Cox also said the subdivision’s primary well is scheduled for a replacement. 

But it is that kind of information — about scheduled replacements, planned maintenance, and boil advisories — that Daigle said residents have struggled to get a hold of. He said the board of the homeowners association has been swamped with calls and emails from residents about their water. 

Connie Norris, 72, said she did not find out there was a boil water advisory until days after it began. She said she was recently diagnosed with cancer, and was worried about the potential effect of the water on her health. She said she ended up going to a hotel after she learned of the boil advisory.

Norris said her monthly bill has gone from $26 in 2020 to nearly $130 today, echoing other residents’ concerns about higher rates since the company took over.

In January 2024, Belair and three other subdivisions, covering approximately 3,000 Slidell-area homes, were without water entirely for about a day. Cliff Martin, who has a colostomy bag that he has to clean with water daily, said during that time and during the recent boil advisory, he found another place to stay out of health concerns. 

At a tense town hall meeting in Slidell in January, Cox defended Magnolia’s rate hikes, saying the extra money would go towards fixing troubled water systems in Louisiana.

Residents also lobbed complaints at Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, who represents St. Tammany, and which must approve rate increases. Skrmetta said the higher rates were likely comparable to what residents paid in municipalities like Slidell. 

St. Tammany Parish Councilmember Arthur Laughlin, whose district includes Belair, said he organized the discussion on Thursday’s council agenda because he wants residents to bring their concerns to the council. 

Laughlin said he hopes the conversation will lead the council to consider a resolution asking Skrmetta to pause Magnolia Water from buying any future water systems until they catch up on addressing problems with their existing ones.

“It has become quite obvious that any remedy has to be politically implemented,” Daigle said. “If we have to rely on politics, it’s going to be a slow, lengthy and painful process”