This is an opinion column.
What comes to mind when you think of the Birmingham Water Works Board?
The indictments? The ineptitude? The cronyism? The constant fights over who gets paid?
Probably not.
That time in 2014 they lost $4.3 million in retirement funds to a ponzi scheme?
Probably not that either, unless it was your pension.
Maybe it’s that the Birmingham Water Works has raised rates every year in memory. Or that time in 2017 when they bumbled around and locked people out of their own accounts, making customers create new passwords that were 40 characters long?
That’s this long: #Th1sismypasswordyay@Th1sismypasswordhey. It’s not a password, it’s a short story.
Chances are, the thing that comes to mind when you think of the BWWB is your money. And how it evaporates. How it makes you bang your head against a wall. It happens all the time.
Which is why Mayor Randall Woodfin has been so vocal about the water works in recent weeks, blasting the board on social media, accepting Board Chairman Christopher Rice’s resignation and refusing to let Rice change his mind.
Woodfin says he gets calls all the time from people who say they feel screwed by the water board, by those who get outrageous bills, who call the water works only to be put on hold and treated rudely.
“There is no excuse,” he said. “If there is an issue it should be addressed with respect. Be courteous.”
He is right about that. There is no excuse for much that goes on, and has gone on at the water works.
