Press Releases

NEW ORLEANS, LA – The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO) recently concluded a detailed review of its wastewater consumption charges. As a result, SWBNO identified approximately 5,300 accounts (roughly four percent of SWBNO customers) that were overcharged for wastewater services due to a technical error. These wastewater consumption charges have been corrected moving forward.

To address this matter, SWBNO plans to issue letters to impacted customers and provide a bill credit to active accounts. Checks will be issued to customers with closed accounts within 30 days.

“As soon as a customer brought this issue to our attention, we reached out to our software vendor who reviewed all 140,000 accounts and confirmed this was a system error that impacted a specific group of customers,” said SWBNO Executive Director Ghassan Korban. “We are looking into all our preexisting billing systems to ensure our smart meter rollout is as seamless as possible. This is another example of our ongoing efforts to increase transparency and improve our customers’ experience.”

SWBNO determines the wastewater portion of a customer’s bill based on the amount of water used. For every 100 gallons of drinking water metered, we typically bill for 85 gallons of wastewater, assuming some water does not go down a drain for treatment. The technical error identified in the review prevented some customers from receiving that wastewater credit.

Questions can be directed to 52-WATER or customerservice@swbno.org. 

###