Across Mississippi, many of the thousands of water and sewer systems in the state have struggled to stay compliant with federal public health and environmental laws. Often, those systems either delay raising rates for too long or lack the customer base to fund needed infrastructure improvements.
By virtue of being a rural state, Mississippi has gotten stuck with a large number of water and sewer systems serving very small populations — a median of 1,200 customers on the water side — making it less cost effective to keep those systems running.
This legislative session, state lawmakers took several steps to hold those systems more accountable. Sen. Bart Williams, a Republican from Starkville who worked on a few water and sewer bills, said this was by far the most the Legislature had accomplished in this area in a while. One of his bills, which is awaiting Gov. Tate Reeves’ signature, would create a Rural Water Oversight Committee.
“We’re requiring water associations to do a rate study, capacity study and asset management,” Williams said of Senate Bill 2526. “That allows us to come check the temperature of the association.”
Water associations are board-run nonprofit utilities. The state has limited oversight over those boards, which instead are mainly accountable to the customers or members in their service area.
Water in a Black Bayou water treatment plant storage tank. Impurities settle at the bottom of the tank and are siphoned off, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayBy December 2027, those utilities would need to submit rate and capacity studies and asset management plans to the committee. They would then need to complete rate and capacity studies every five years after that. The idea is to ensure providers have the resources and rates necessary to fund and maintain their systems.
“I think it’s needed because some of these (systems) are just derelict,” said Sen. Angela Hill, a Republican from Picayune.
Hill pointed to the Pearl River Central Water Association in her district, which serves 11,830 people. Customers there waited years for leak repairs, she said, and board members refused to hold regular meetings. Recently, though, Hill helped organize residents to oust and replace the entire board.
“It’s taken a long time, our people have suffered for years with water problems, and nothing got better until legislators got involved,” she said.
Under SB 2526, the Mississippi State Department of Health would keep a list of systems in “financial distress,” and those systems would have to file an improvement plan with the Rural Water Oversight Committee. If such a system didn’t follow those steps, the state could then limit its financial assistance.
The seven-member committee would be made up of the following officials or their designees: state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dane Maxwell; director of MSDH’s Bureau of Public Water Supply Bill Moody; director of the state environmental department Chris Wells; a representative from the drinking water state revolving loan fund; Mississippi Rural Water Association CEO Kirby Mayfield; and one appointee each of the governor and lieutenant governor.
During discussion of the bill, lawmakers debated how much “teeth” it needed to ensure providers were following guidelines. Hill pointed to Senate Bill 2310, which the governor approved this month, as an example.
In that bill, lawmakers gave the state Public Service Commission power to cancel a city’s certificate to serve drinking water more than a mile outside its boundaries. Williams, who wrote that bill as well, said its genesis was complaints about Canton Municipal Utilities. Customers there were recently caught off guard by skyrocketing water bills, WLBT reported.
Sen. Angela Burks Hill, R-Picayune, listens during a Senate Education Committee meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, at the Capitol in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayIf the PSC finds a city’s service to be “inadequate,” it can petition a court to appoint a receiver over the system. The legislation mirrors what lawmakers did for electric utilities in 2024, paving the way for the PSC to intervene in Holly Springs’ power troubles last year.
Hill tried to amend the rural water oversight bill to give the PSC the same power over water associations. Her amendment passed in the Senate Energy Committee but didn’t make it into the bill’s final version.
“You know how bad Jackson water got,” she said. “People shouldn’t have to suffer through that. Now they’re putting in a fix for municipalities, but the same exact thing can happen with a rural water association, even if it’s member owned.”
Mayfield, of the Mississippi Rural Water Association, said there’s enough enforcement over those associations in the state’s Nonprofit Corporation Act. That law allows members of a water association to petition to replace their board members if they’re not meeting standards.
“I just told the Legislature: We’ve got the laws to deal with it, we just need to enforce what laws we already have,” he told Mississippi Today.
Lawmakers this session also passed House Bill 1632, creating the “Community Public Wastewater System Infrastructure Sustainability Act.” The bill, which is also awaiting the governor’s signature, would require the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to publish annual letter grades for each public sewer system in the state.
The law would also give the PSC authority over any wastewater system that receives a “D” or “F” grade, allowing the commission to hold a hearing over the utility’s performance and potentially revoke its certificate of service.
Those systems would then have to tell customers within 30 days what grade they received. MDEQ has until Jan. 1, 2028, to release the first set of grades. MSDH publishes similar evaluations of the state’s drinking water systems.
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