Magnolia Water- 200% bill increase

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Josiah Cox, CEO of Central States Water Resources, Magnolia’s parent company, told regulators the company has inherited failing systems often absent of investment in decades. Many, he said, were under federal or state consent decrees for chronic environmental violations.

“When we buy these systems, you have got to remember, they often had not had rate increases for decades,” Cox said. “It was a chronic lack of investment.”

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https://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2025/08/21/magnolia-water-rate-hikes-louisiana-upgrades/

I just sold my house that magnolia was the water provider. I will never buy another property if they are the water provider.

Yeah I read those articles. The justification is that systems need upgrades/ updates. But it seems several places have gotten worse or stayed the same since they took over. Complaints have already been stacking up and now tension continues to rise due to the price increase.

these fricks control the water in my neighborhood and we've been dealing with this shite ever since they took over.

The main issue in my neighborhood is we are paying out of the arse for "sewage", but have gotten nothing in return. No service, equipment, or other upgrades.

Call Jean Paul Cousson’s office, you.

they updated the sewage in our neighborhood and did a good job. TESi did no maintenance whatsoever at this location and when Magnolia took over they almost immediately updated the whole system. i dont know how else they could have updated the system without increasing cost.

This is Central States/Great River’s MO….they buy rural water systems all over the country then go to the public service commission in the state and complain about the dilapidated equipment and the need for a rate increase.

They did this to multiple systems in MS and the previous 3 member public service commission approved massive rate hikes. Well, once the hikes started hitting and people became aware, we bombarded the commission with emails, phone calls, and were put on the agenda for public comment. We fought it and won. They went to a flat fee with a much smaller increase.

When they first took over, we had numerous outages, bill inconsistencies, etc. It’s a really shitty run organization. We had one boil water notice in 16yrs we were in our house and had 5 the first yr under Great River.

News report on the MPSC denial of rate increase

Just wait and see how high water bills get when all these AI companies come in an destroy local water tables just so lazy people can have their email summarized.

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I think we just found the Magnolia employee/executive.

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In-law used to work for PSC years ago. Basically, the original neighborhood developers are required to provide a water treatment facility for each neighborhood.
A few years after the neighborhood is fully occupied, the original builders let the water treatment equipment go to crap.
NO ONE wants to mess with these hundreds of tiny "water companies"
Larger companies are buying up these small neighborhood facilities for vey little money. They're almost giving them away.
Larger companies are performing repairs and using customers who don't need upgrades to pay for those repairs.

It's very much like auto insurance where the majority of customers who never get in wrecks pay for those who do.