Kingfish — City of Alexandria

What is the Rapides Island Water Association?

Bentley Hensel — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:48:35 GMT

Most people who get their water from the Rapides Island Water Association have never been to a board meeting, don't know where the water comes from, and couldn't say who owns the pipe in the yard. That isn't a criticism. It's how a utility is supposed to work. You turn the handle, water comes out.

But RIWA is not a city utility and it is not a company. It is a member-owned nonprofit cooperative, founded in 1972, run by an unpaid board elected from the people it serves, rebuilt with federal money, and documented in a stack of public records almost nobody reads. If you are a customer, you are an owner.

Here is what those records say.

The short version

RIWA is a member-owned rural water cooperative serving 5,658 people through 1,886 service connections west and north of Alexandria, out of an office in Boyce.
It does not pump all its own water. The co-op runs five wells and also buys finished water from the City of Alexandria at two connections.
The state gave it an A — 105 out of 100 — in both 2024 and 2025, with zero deductions in all seven categories. EPA's national database lists no violations.
Its own annual water quality report carries a federally required warning: fluoride above 2.0 mg/L, and children under nine should be given another source of drinking water.
It has run an operating deficit for four straight years — about $228,000 in the year ending September 2024 — while carrying roughly $4.5 million in federal debt from the rebuild that earned it a state award.
Nobody sets its rates but its own board. Not the Public Service Commission.

Fast facts


Legal name	Rapides Island Water Association, Inc.
Type	Member-owned rural water cooperative; IRS 501(c)(12)
Founded	1972
Office	500-B Ulster Ave. / P.O. Box 458, Boyce, LA 71409
Phone	(318) 793-4812
Website	rapidesislandwater.com
Public Water System ID	LA1079020
EIN	72-0976331
People served	5,658
Service connections	1,886
Water source	Five wells, plus purchased water from the City of Alexandria
2025 state water grade	A (105/100)
Primary regulator	Louisiana Department of Health, Safe Drinking Water Program

Population and connection counts are EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System figures for LA1079020.

The name, and the territory

"Rapides Island" is the low ground west and north of Alexandria, bounded by the Red River and its old channels — rural without being remote. The service area threads out from Boyce along the highways and parish roads, toward Twin Bridges and out Highway 28, to the edge of where the City of Alexandria's own system stops.

Those boundaries are not informal. Rural water associations file service-area descriptions of record, and where a federally indebted co-op's territory ends turns out to matter a great deal — see the section on federal debt below.

Where the water actually comes from

This is the part the co-op's own website doesn't answer, and the part most customers get wrong.

RIWA is a groundwater system, but it is not a self-contained one. Its 2024 Consumer Confidence Report lists seven sources: Wells 4, 5, 6 (Shuler Road), 7 and 8 — and two purchase connections, "buys from LA1079001" at McKeithen Drive and at Twin Bridges. LA1079001 is the City of Alexandria. EPA's facility inventory for the system confirms both connections as active, and adds a third, inactive emergency tie to Alexandria on Highway 28 and an emergency connection to the Town of Boyce.

So a meaningful share of the water in these pipes is finished city water, bought wholesale. That single fact links a small independent co-op's supply to the operating condition of a municipal utility it does not control and cannot vote on — which is worth knowing before the next time Alexandria's system has a bad week.

There is no river intake, no surface reservoir, and no treatment plant in the sense a city has one. Groundwater is disinfected, stored, and pumped. That design is cheap, reliable and typical for rural Louisiana.

The wells draw the aquifer system underneath central Rapides Parish. USGS identifies the Carnahan Bayou unit of the Jasper aquifer system as one of the principal freshwater sources in this part of the parish, and reports that water from it is generally moderately hard and, manganese aside, generally within secondary drinking-water standards. We have not confirmed from the state well registry which unit each RIWA well is screened in, or at what depth, and we are not going to print numbers we haven't pulled.

The Legislative Auditor's statewide review, Louisiana's Management of Water Resources, is the best single primer on why "who is pumping how much, from where" is a genuinely hard question to answer in this state.

The report card

Since Act 98 of the 2021 Regular Session, the Louisiana Department of Health issues every community water system an annual letter grade — the first program of its kind in the country, as national coverage noted at the time. Systems are scored against seven standards and must publish the grade in their annual water quality report.

RIWA's 2025 water grade is an A: 105 out of 100. Its 2024 grade was identical. Both years, the score sheet is clean straight down:

Standard	Max deduction	RIWA
Federal water quality	−30	−0
State water quality	−10	−0
Financial sustainability	−10	−0
Operations & maintenance	−15	−0
Infrastructure	−20	−0
Customer satisfaction	−10	−0
Secondary contaminants	−5	−0
Bonus (asset management, well and storage programs, training)	+10	+5

You can score above 100 because of that bonus line. RIWA took no deductions at all and earned half the available bonus, which is how a system lands at 105 percent.

The detail pages are worth reading rather than the letter alone: no maximum-contaminant-level violations, no Lead and Copper treatment-technique violations, no administrative order, no chlorine violations, no boil notices or outages, a licensed operator on staff, an acceptable rate study, an acceptable audit, no fiscal administrator, no unresolved deficiencies, and a complaint log filed.

That is a very good report card, and it should be said plainly: on the measures the state actually grades, this co-op is running a tight system. Separately, EPA's national compliance database returns no violations for LA1079020 — while the city system it buys from, LA1079001, carries six, two of them health-based. Note that SDWA data in ECHO lags by about a quarter, so neither figure is real-time.

The fluoride notice

One thing the letter grade does not capture, and the co-op's own annual report does.

The 2024 Consumer Confidence Report reproduces EPA's required health-effects language for fluoride:

The drinking water provided by your community water system has a fluoride concentration greater than 2.0 mg/L. ... Children under nine (9) should be provided with alternative sources of drinking water or water that has been treated to remove the fluoride to avoid the possibility of staining and pitting of their permanent teeth.

The measured numbers behind that notice: treated water at 2.3 ppm on Aug. 27, 2024, ranging 2.2 to 2.3. The 2023 report flagged "fluoride exceed secondary contaminant level." The 2022 report recorded 2.3 ppm in RIWA's own water and 2.4 ppm in the water purchased from Alexandria.

Three things have to be said together, because leaving any one out would mislead:

This is not a violation. The federal enforceable limit — the maximum contaminant level — is 4.0 ppm, and the co-op is well under it. The 2.0 mg/L threshold is a secondary standard, about cosmetic tooth staining, not a health-based one. That is why the state's grade sheet shows no deduction.
It appears to be natural, not added. The source water sample taken Dec. 17, 2023 already reads 2.2 ppm — before treatment. Fluoride at that level coming out of the ground points to the aquifer, not to anything the co-op is putting in.
It still matters to parents. The consequence in the notice is real and permanent, and it applies to a specific group: children under nine. A family that has never opened a Consumer Confidence Report has no way to know.

That last point is the whole reason this guide exists. The information is published, correct, and effectively invisible.

What they built

The co-op has not been standing still. Between roughly 2018 and 2020 it completed more than $6 million in improvements to what was then a 48-year-old system, financed through a USDA Rural Utilities Service loan and grant package: a new well, an elevated storage tank, two ground storage tanks, a unified control system, about 10 miles of new water mains with hydrants, upgrades to four booster stations, drive-by radio-read meters, generators, and main replacement in the Kincaid/Amelia Drive area.

That program is why the Louisiana Rural Water Association named RIWA its Water System of the Year for the northern part of the state in 2019. For a system this size it is a substantial body of work.

It is also the origin of the debt.

The money

Small rural water systems in Louisiana live in a permanent squeeze: federal loans build the infrastructure, but the rate base is thin, the pipe is long, and there are few customers per mile. RIWA's federal filings show exactly what that looks like on paper.

The co-op files an IRS Form 990 each year, and those are public. Its fiscal year ends September 30.

FY	Revenue	Expenses	Result	Total liabilities
2018	$780,450	$637,560	+$142,890	$104,794
2019	$1,166,990	$887,811	+$279,179	$5,127,902
2020	$1,876,355	$1,067,184	+$809,171	$4,975,158
2021	$1,125,323	$1,180,473	−$55,150	$4,847,835
2022	$1,055,026	$1,324,889	−$269,863	$4,761,538
2023	$1,059,455	$1,269,671	−$210,216	$4,689,631
2024	$1,064,205	$1,292,361	−$228,156	$4,593,110

Source: IRS Forms 990, EIN 72-0976331, via ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer.

Read the liabilities column first. In a single fiscal year the co-op went from a nearly debt-free $2.6 million system to a $7.9 million system carrying $5.1 million in federal debt. That is the rebuild, and it is doing what it was supposed to do — total liabilities have come down every year since, to about $4.59 million at the end of FY2024, of which $4.50 million is secured notes and mortgages.

Now read the revenue column. It has barely moved: $1.055 million in 2022, $1.064 million in 2024 — under one percent in three years. Expenses have run between $1.27 million and $1.32 million throughout. The result is four consecutive years in the red, most recently about $228,000.

One important caveat, stated up front. A paper deficit is not the same as running out of cash. A system that just capitalized roughly $6 million in new assets carries a large depreciation charge against income every year afterward, and depreciation is a bookkeeping entry, not a check anybody writes. The summary 990 data does not break that line out. The audited financial statements do — and that is where a reader who wants the cash picture should go, not here.

The regulator's own read supports caution before alarm: LDH scored financial sustainability at zero deductions in both 2024 and 2025, recording an acceptable rate study, an acceptable audit on file, and no fiscal administrator appointed for poor financial management.

Two structural facts shape all of it:

USDA debt. The improvements were financed under Section 306 of the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act, 7 U.S.C. § 1926. Ratepayers retire that debt over decades.
Rates are set by the board. RIWA is not regulated by the Louisiana Public Service Commission. That is local control, but it also means a rate increase is a decision neighbors make about neighbors, which is exactly as comfortable as it sounds.

You can read the books. Under Louisiana audit law, R.S. 24:513, the Legislative Auditor has authority to examine or review the financial statements of private water supply systems receiving local or state assistance. Search the entity name in the LLA's public reports database and read the balance sheet and the auditor's findings yourself. Very few people ever do.

Who runs it

RIWA is governed by an unpaid board of directors elected from the membership, with day-to-day work handled by a small staff. As listed on the co-op's board members page:

Tracy Breithaupt — President
Joel Mathews — Vice President
Ronnie Venson
Jeff DeKeyzer
Donna Turnage
David Gill
Darron Rachal

The board meets at 8 a.m. on the third Tuesday of each month, and the annual meeting of the members is at 5 p.m. on the first Tuesday in December.

Write those down. As a cooperative, RIWA is not a public body subject to the Open Meetings Law the way a police jury is — but its members are its owners, and the annual meeting is the one night a year the ownership is in the room. The practical route to influence runs through that room: attend, ask for the financial report, run for a seat.

Engineering has come from outside firms rather than staff. The co-op's account of the 2020 project credits Heath McGuffee of Meyer, Meyer, LaCroix & Hixson.

Who regulates it

This trips people up constantly, so, plainly:

Water quality and system operations — the Louisiana Department of Health, Safe Drinking Water Program. LDH holds primacy under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and supervises more than 1,200 public water systems statewide. Boil advisories, sampling, and enforcement run through LDH.
Finances — the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, under the private-water-system provision above.
Federal loans and grants — USDA Rural Development.
Rates — the co-op's own board. Not the Public Service Commission.
Federal drinking water standards — U.S. EPA, through LDH as the primacy agency.

The Act 98 grading program also requires every system to submit a rate study, annual and financial reports, a flushing plan, and a customer complaint log to LDH each January. Which is why "we're doing a rate study" is often less a local initiative than a state requirement coming due.

A note on 501(c)(12)

RIWA's federal tax status is not the familiar charity category. It files as a 501(c)(12) — the section covering mutual and cooperative utility companies, the same one that carries rural electric and telephone co-ops.

The defining condition of that section is the 85 percent member-income test: to keep the exemption, at least 85 percent of the organization's income has to come from members, collected for the sole purpose of meeting losses and expenses. It is a legal structure built on the assumption that the customers and the owners are the same people, and that the enterprise is not supposed to make money off them.

That is the frame for everything above. The deficits, the flat revenue, the board-set rates and the volunteer directors are not incidental features of how RIWA is run. They are what the corporate form is.

Why federal debt shapes the map

Here is the piece almost nobody outside the water business knows, and it explains a great deal about how rural systems behave.

Under 7 U.S.C. § 1926(b), while a rural water association carries outstanding USDA debt, no municipality or competing provider may curtail or limit the service it provides — including by annexation. Congress wrote the provision to stop cities from annexing the profitable customers out of a federally financed rural system and leaving the debt behind.

Courts have distilled it to a short test: the association must have continuing indebtedness to the USDA, and must have provided or made service available to the disputed area. Where both hold, the protection is strong and doubts are generally resolved in the indebted system's favor. The Tenth Circuit's Deer Creek line of cases is a good entry point, and practitioners keep a running index of § 1926(b) litigation.

For a co-op like RIWA — $4.5 million still owed, and a service territory abutting a growing city it also buys water from — that federal debt is simultaneously its heaviest burden and its strongest legal shield.

How to check your own water in five minutes

You do not have to take our word for any of this. All of it is free and public.

Your Consumer Confidence Report. Every community water system publishes one annually, listing sources, detections, and violations. Start at LDH's drinking water quality page, or read RIWA's 2024 report directly.
Your water grade. Pull the one-page report card from LDH's water grade program. Grades are filed by parish and PWSID.
EPA SDWIS. Search the system ID — LA1079020 — at Envirofacts for inventory, violations, and enforcement history.
EPA ECHO. Compliance history against systems nationwide, with the quarterly lag noted.
The 990s and the audits. Read the federal filings at ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer and search the entity name in the Legislative Auditor's database.

The co-op's own rates, forms and notices are posted under forms and reports and recent news.

Accountability box: Rapides Island Water Association, Inc.

What it is: A member-owned nonprofit rural water cooperative, IRS 501(c)(12), founded 1972, serving 5,658 people through 1,886 connections west and north of Alexandria.
Who runs it: Seven unpaid directors elected by the membership; Tracy Breithaupt, president. A licensed operator and office staff handle daily operations.
Who elects them: The members — meaning the customers.
Water source: Five wells plus purchased water from the City of Alexandria at two connections.
Money: $1.06 million revenue against $1.29 million expenses in FY2024, an operating gap of about $228,000; $4.59 million total liabilities, $4.50 million of it secured federal debt; $2.79 million net assets.
Quality record: State grade A (105/100) in 2024 and 2025; no violations listed in EPA's national database; a standing fluoride notice affecting children under nine.
When and where it meets: Board, 8 a.m. the third Tuesday monthly. Annual members' meeting, 5 p.m. the first Tuesday in December. 500-B Ulster Ave., Boyce.
How to reach it: P.O. Box 458, Boyce, LA 71409; (318) 793-4812; office hours 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday–Friday.

Rapides Island Water Association is a fifty-year-old, member-owned, federally financed cooperative that pumps and buys water for about 5,700 people around Boyce. It rebuilt most of its system with USDA money, won a state award for it, and has earned the state's top grade two years running. It is also spending more than it collects, carrying $4.5 million in federal debt, and publishing a fluoride warning that most of the parents it applies to have never read.

All of that is true at once, and all of it is public. It is exactly the sort of institution that shapes daily life for thousands of people and gets no attention at all until something goes wrong.

Spot an error? Receipts welcome: tips@kingfish.la.

Sources and further reading

Who owns your utility, and who answers for it

Bentley Hensel — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 21:11:05 GMT

Look at the bill on your counter. Somebody owns the pipe or the wire it's charging you for, and that somebody is one of about nine different kinds of things. A city. A shareholder. A board your neighbors elected. A board appointed by the police jury. A federal agency. A nonprofit you technically own a share of without knowing it.

Which one it is decides almost everything you'd want to know: who sets the price, who can be voted out, whether the budget is a public record, and whether anyone outside the organization is checking the math.

And the single word most likely to lead you wrong is public.

The short version

"Public utility" is a legal status, not an ownership category. Under the Federal Power Act, the government-owned systems are precisely the ones that are not public utilities.
Nationally, electricity comes through roughly 3,000 distribution utilities in three families: 168 investor-owned, 1,958 publicly owned, and 812 cooperatives — EIA's 2017 survey counts, the most recent clean ownership snapshot it has published.
Water is the opposite shape. There are about 156,000 public water systems, and the ownership is scattered: of the community systems serving fewer than 3,300 people, about 54 percent are privately owned — often a mobile home park or a homeowners association.
The Louisiana Public Service Commission says it plainly on its own About page: "Municipally owned and operated utilities are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission."
Louisiana electric cooperatives are regulated by the LPSC only if their own members vote to be — an opt-in referendum under R.S. 12:426.
The accountability gap is not between public and private. It is the private nonprofit middle — rural electric co-ops, rural water associations, mutual companies, HOA, and park systems — which are frequently outside both rate regulation and the open-records laws.

The word that causes the trouble

Three different ideas get flattened into the phrase "public utility," and two of them are close to opposites.

"Public utility" is a regulatory status. It means an entity that serves the public as a regulated monopoly. It is usually a privately owned, for-profit corporation. Under the Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. § 824(e) defines a "public utility" as "any person who owns or operates facilities subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission." The very next subsection, § 824(f), carves out the government:

No provision in this subchapter shall apply to, or be deemed to include, the United States, a State or any political subdivision of a State, an electric cooperative that receives financing under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 … or any agency, authority, or instrumentality of any one or more of the foregoing.

Under federal law, entities owned by the public are excluded from the definition of "public utility."

"Publicly owned utility" is an ownership category — a municipal system, a district, a federal agency. That's EIA's term of art, and it's the one that means what most people think "public utility" means.

"Public power" is the industry's word for community- and government-owned electricity — the American Public Power Association's membership.

Louisiana mirrors the same trap exactly. The LPSC regulates "public utilities providing electric, water, wastewater, natural gas and certain telecommunications services" — and then states, on the same page, that "Municipally owned and operated utilities are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission." So Cleco is a "public utility" that is entirely private. The City of Alexandria's utility system is government-owned and, for the commission's purposes, is not a "public utility" at all.

When a document says "public utility," find out whether it means regulated like a monopoly or owned by the government. It is regularly one and not the other.

The nine owners

Who owns it	Who governs it	Who sets the rates	Open records & meetings?	Where the paper trail is
Investor-owned utility	Shareholders; a board of directors	State commission (retail), FERC (wholesale/transmission)	The company, no. Its rate dockets, yes	FERC Form 1, EIA-861/923, SEC 10-K, commission dockets
Municipal utility	The city	City council or a utility board	The local governing body — usually not the state commission	City budget and audit, Legislative Auditor, bond disclosures
Utility or public power district	A political subdivision	Elected commissioners	The district's own board	State auditor, EIA-861, bond filings
Waterworks / sewerage district	A political subdivision	Board, usually appointed by the police jury	The board; sometimes the commission	Legislative Auditor, posted budgets, SDWIS/NPDES
Rural electric cooperative	Its members	Board elected one-member-one-vote	Its own board — unless members vote otherwise	IRS Form 990, RUS filings, EIA-861
Rural water association	Its members	Member-elected board	Its own board	IRS Form 990, SDWIS, USDA Rural Development
Mutual water company	Member-shareholders	Member-elected board	Members	Form 990 if 501(c)(12), SDWIS
HOA / mobile-home-park system	The association or the park owner	The HOA board, or the owner	The owner	A PWSID in SDWIS. Often nothing else
Federal power (TVA, the PMAs)	The federal government	Federal board or administrator	Cost-based, set by the board or administrator	Federal FOIA, TVA's SEC filings, federal audits

Who sets the rates tells you where to go to argue about your bill. Open records and meetings tell you whether you can see the file at all.

Electricity: three families, one of them is Nebraska

EIA's Annual Electric Power Industry Report is the census here. Its most-cited ownership breakdown, published Aug. 15, 2019 using 2017 survey data, found roughly 3,000 distribution utilities: 168 investor-owned utilities averaging 654,600 customers each, 1,958 publicly owned utilities averaging 12,100 each, and 812 cooperatives averaging 24,500 each. The IOUs are about five percent of the utilities and, per EIA's own headline on that report, 72 percent of the customers. (That's a 2017 snapshot; EIA-861 releases annually, and the current-year counts should be pulled fresh.)

Investor-owned. Shareholders own it, a board runs it, and the state commission sets the retail rate through a litigated rate case. The company itself is not a public body — but the case file is public, and it is rich. An IOU's revenue requirement, capital plan, executive compensation, and cost of debt all end up in a docket someone can read. Add FERC Form 1 and, for a traded parent, the SEC filings. Of all the ownership models, the for-profit one leaves the deepest public record.

Municipal. The city owns the poles. The council or an appointed utility board sets the rate. There is no outside regulator standing between you and the price, which cuts both ways: the decision is made locally by people you can vote out, and it is made without an adversarial rate case in which anyone is paid to argue your side.

Cooperative. Members own it, elect the board one-member-one-vote, and get margins allocated back as capital credits. It exists because of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, and its successor, the USDA's Rural Utilities Service, still holds much of the debt. Federal law treats co-ops as outside the "public utility" definition; state law varies on whether the commission sets their rates.

And then Nebraska, which has no investor-owned electric utility at all. Every customer in the state is served by a public power district, a municipal system, or a cooperative — the one place in America where the ownership question has a single answer.

Louisiana's version of the rules

The exclusions here are constitutional, not merely statutory. Article IV, Section 21 of the Louisiana Constitution creates the five-member elected Public Service Commission and then withholds from it any "power to regulate any common carrier or public utility owned, operated, or regulated on the effective date of this constitution by the governing authority of one or more political subdivisions, except by the approval of a majority of the electors voting in an election held for that purpose."

The statutes carry it through:

R.S. 45:1163 gives the commission power over "any street railway, gas, electric light, heat, power, waterworks, or other local public utility" for fixing rates and service.
R.S. 45:1164 (B) removes municipal systems from that power unless the affected electors vote to be covered.
Cooperatives are opt-in. R.S. 45:1163(A)(3) provides that a co-op's rate schedule approved by its own board does not require commission approval; § 1163(B) says the commission regulates "any electric cooperative, that, by a vote of its membership, has elected to be regulated by the commission, as provided in R.S. 12:426." That statute sets the mechanics: a petition from ten percent of the members forces a mail referendum — Shall the Public Service Commission have jurisdiction over this electric cooperative — decided by majority, with twenty percent of the membership as a quorum.

Whether a Louisiana co-op answers to a state regulator is a question its own customers decide, and most customers have no idea the vote is available to them.

Water and sewer districts are creatures of the police jury. Under R.S. 33:3811 a police jury may "divide their respective parishes into one or more waterworks districts," and under R.S. 33:3813 the jury appoints the five commissioners who run it. Same pattern for fire protection districts. These are political subdivisions: they are inside the Public Records Law, inside the Open Meetings Law, and inside the Legislative Auditor's jurisdiction — but nobody elected the board. If you want the accountability, you have to go get the documents; the ballot won't do it for you.

If you don't know what a police jury is or what powers it holds, start with our explainer and the one on the Rapides Parish jury specifically. The records route is in how Louisiana's public records law works.

Water: the law reaches everyone, the ownership reaches everywhere

Drinking water is the sector where ownership scatters furthest — and, usefully, the sector where federal law cares least about it.

The Safe Drinking Water Act defines a public water system at 42 U.S.C. § 300f(4)(A) as "a system for the provision to the public of water for human consumption through pipes or other constructed conveyances, if such system has at least fifteen service connections or regularly serves at least twenty-five individuals." Nothing in that sentence is about who owns it. Fifteen connections and you are regulated, whether you are a city of 200,000 or a trailer park with one well. (The familiar transient / non-transient split is a regulation, 40 CFR § 141.2, not a statute.)

The scale, from EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System as summarized by HHS: about 156,000 public water systems, of which roughly 51,000 are community water systems serving a little under 300 million people. The distribution is extreme — 4,221 systems, 8 percent of them, serve 82 percent of the population.

The Congressional Research Service's report on small water systems (Nov. 22, 2022, using an Aug. 9, 2022 SDWIS pull) puts the ownership question in numbers. Of about 49,443 community water systems: 24,163 run by local governments, 22,577 privately owned, 1,192 public/private, 710 Native American, 437 state, 364 federal. Approximately 81 percent of community water systems serve fewer than 3,300 individuals, and of those small systems, about 54 percent are privately owned and "generally operate as an ancillary part of another business, such as a mobile home park, or as a part of a homeowners association." At the other end, 84 percent of systems serving 3,300 or more are operated by local governments.

CRS also flags the limits of its own source, which are relevant to any story built on this data: the SDWIS database "does not collect information on ownership type (e.g., investor-owned utilities or other types of water systems operated for profit or not for profit)."

Most Americans get water from the government. Most water systems are small, and a large share of those are somebody's side business.

The federal debt that draws the map

One provision explains behavior that otherwise looks strange. Under 7 U.S.C. § 1926(b), while a rural water association carries outstanding USDA debt, its service "shall not be curtailed or limited by inclusion of the area served by such association within the boundaries of any municipal corporation or other public body, or by the granting of any private franchise for similar service within such area during the term of such loan."

Congress wrote it so that cities could not annex the profitable customers from a federally financed rural system and leave the debt behind. The practical effect is that a small nonprofit's loan balance is also its territorial shield — and that the boundary between a growing city and the co-op next door is set in Washington, not at the parish line.

And the statutes that set the price of a sale

When an investor-owned water company buys a municipal system, the price the buyer can recover from ratepayers used to be capped at book value — original cost less depreciation. A growing number of states have adopted "fair market value" statutes that let the acquirer put an appraised value into rate base instead, which raises what a city can get for its system and raises what customers pay afterward.

Pennsylvania's Act 12 of 2016 is the most well-documented version, and the state's own regulator has explained what it does. In an August 2024 report, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission described Section 1329 as a process to establish "fair market value acquisitions of municipal water or wastewater systems, as opposed to a depreciated original cost (DOC) valuation," and added public hearings and rate-impact notice requirements because acquisition costs above DOC flow into rate base. Spotlight PA has tracked what it did to bills there.

Sewer: the permit doesn't care who owns you

Wastewater is the simplest section in this piece. Any point-source discharge to waters of the United States needs a Clean Water Act NPDES permit. A publicly owned treatment works holds one. A private plant holds one. An industrial user that discharges into a treatment works is subject to pretreatment rather than to its own permit. Ownership changes nothing about the obligation, which makes NPDES one of the few places you can compare systems across ownership models on equal terms.

For the capital picture, EPA's Clean Watersheds Needs Survey — the 2022 edition is the 17th — documents twenty-year needs for treatment works, stormwater, and decentralized systems nationwide.

Broadband, fire, ambulance: the same question, fewer rules

Broadband repeats the utility pattern without the rate regulation. Cities and utility districts build networks; electric and telephone co-ops extend fiber. The accountability question is unchanged — a municipal network is a public body and a co-op generally isn't — but there's no commission setting the price and no federal form to file. Note that the widely quoted counts of municipal networks, and of states restricting them, come from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's community broadband project and similar advocacy trackers, not from a government census. Attribute them by name.

Fire protection districts are political subdivisions with taxing power, and in Louisiana the parish governing authority both creates them and appoints the commissioners. They are audited by the Legislative Auditor and covered by the sunshine laws.

Ambulance service is the outlier, because in much of the country nobody is required to provide it at all. The National Conference of State Legislatures, in a brief updated July 17, 2026, counts "at least 19 states and the District of Columbia" that have enacted legislation explicitly using the word "essential" to define EMS in statute — which leaves most states without one. NCSL also notes that ambulance services "may be operated by government (municipal, county, regional or state), health care systems or private entities," and that roughly 4.5 million Americans live in an "ambulance desert," more than 25 minutes from the nearest service. Where EMS runs through a district or a fire department, it's a public body. Where it runs through a private company, it is not — and the difference shows up the first time someone asks for the response-time data.

Who is exempt

Run the ownership types against three questions — who sets the rate, who can see the books, who audits — and they sort into three groups, not two.

Government-owned systems are inside everything. Municipal utilities, waterworks and sewerage districts, fire districts: public records, open meetings, Legislative Auditor. What they escape is the state commission's rate authority, which means the price is set locally, in public, by people who face voters.

Investor-owned utilities are private but heavily documented. A public-records request to Cleco goes nowhere; it is not a public body. But you can read its LPSC docket, its FERC Form 1, and its parent's SEC filings — and in a contested rate case, someone is paid to cross-examine the numbers.

The private nonprofit middle is the dark zone. A rural electric co-op, a rural water association, a mutual water company, a homeowners association's well: each functions like a utility, and each is frequently outside both the commission's rate jurisdiction and the state open-records and open-meetings laws, because it is a private nonprofit corporation. For those organized under IRC 501(c)(12) — the subsection for cooperative utility companies, subject to the rule that at least 85 percent of income comes from members — the IRS Form 990 is often the only window that opens without a lawsuit.

Texas legislated a patch for it: Senate Bill 921 in 2009 gave electric cooperative members statutory access to board meetings and records after documented transparency problems in that state.

A member-owned co-op is not a company that took something from the public. It is the structure rural America used to get service no investor would build, and its owners are its customers. Its books are not secret from the people who own it, either: a member can attend the annual meeting, ask for the financial report, and run for the board. The gap is that only members can, and most never do.

Central Louisiana has all of them in the ground

You can find nearly every model in this piece within an hour's drive of Alexandria.

Investor-owned: Cleco serves much of central Louisiana under LPSC jurisdiction — rates set in dockets at the commission.

Municipal: the City of Alexandria's utility system is one of the more unusual in the state, running "power plants; electric lines and services; water supply and distribution; gas lines and distribution; and sewerage collection and disposal" under Section 4-05 of the city's home rule charter.

Appointed district: waterworks, sewerage and fire protection districts across Rapides and its neighbors, created by the police jury under Title 33 and Title 40, run by commissioners the jury appoints.

Member-owned cooperative: rural water associations serving the areas the city systems don't reach — including the Rapides Island Water Association, a 501(c)(12) co-op that sets its own rates, answers to a board its members elect, and buys part of its water wholesale from Alexandria.

A cooperative outside state rate regulation depends for part of its supply on a municipal system outside state rate regulation, and a customer of the first has no vote in the second. Nothing about it is improper. It is simply what the ownership map looks like when you draw it.

What we don't know yet

Whether Louisiana's public records and open meetings laws reach rural electric co-ops and rural water associations. This is the highest-value open question in the piece. The Legislative Auditor's authority under R.S. 24:513 extends to "public or quasi-public agencies or bodies," and a private nonprofit that receives enough public money can be pulled in — but we have not found an attorney general opinion or Louisiana case squarely deciding whether R.S. 44:1 and R.S. 42:11 reach a 501(c)(12) utility co-op. We are looking.
Which central Louisiana electric cooperatives, if any, have held the R.S. 12:426 referendum and elected LPSC jurisdiction. The statute is clear; the results are not published anywhere we have found.
Current-year ownership counts. The 168 / 1,958 / 812 electric split is 2017 data, and the water figures are an August 2022 SDWIS pull. Both should be refreshed from the current releases before anyone treats them as today's numbers.
How many Louisiana community water systems are privately owned, parish by parish. SDWIS carries the systems but, by CRS's own account, not the ownership type.

If you know the answer to any of these — or have the document — we want it: tips@kingfish.la.

How to find out who owns yours, in about ten minutes

Every step here is free and public.

Read the bill. The legal name on it is the entity. "City of —" is a municipality. "— Waterworks District No. 3" is a political subdivision. "— Association, Inc." or "— Cooperative" is a private nonprofit. A recognizable corporate name is probably investor-owned.
For water, get the PWSID and search it at EPA's Envirofacts. Your annual water quality report has the number on it. That gets you sources, connections, population served, and violations. Cross-check enforcement at ECHO, remembering the data runs about a quarter behind.
For electricity, check whether the LPSC regulates it. If your provider appears in commission dockets, rates are set at the commission and the case file is public. If it doesn't, rates are set by a city council or a co-op board — and that meeting is where to go.
If it's a nonprofit, pull the Form 990 at ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. Revenue, expenses, debt, officers, and whether it files as 501(c)(12). Expect the most recent year available to be 12 to 20 months old.
If it's a public body, pull the audit from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, and the budget and minutes from the body itself under R.S. 44:1.
Find the meeting. A district or council posts its agenda; a co-op holds an annual members' meeting. One of those rooms is where your rate gets set, and it is almost always nearly empty.

The questions worth asking about any utility

Who sets the rate, and in what room? Name the body and the date of the next meeting.
Is there an adversary? In an IOU rate case someone is paid to argue against the increase. In a board-set rate, usually no one is.
Who audits it, and were there findings? Public bodies file with the Legislative Auditor. Nonprofits file a 990. Look at both.
What does it depend on that it does not control? Purchased water, purchased power, one transmission tie, one lender. Dependencies are where small systems fail.
Can you see the file? If the answer is "only if you're a member," that is the story, not a detail.

Ownership is the answer to why one bill can be argued about in a public docket and another is a number a board picked on a Tuesday morning. Every model on this page is legal, and each was built to solve a problem. But they hand the public very different amounts of leverage, and almost nobody is told which one they got.

Spot an error? Receipts welcome: tips@kingfish.la.

Sources and further reading

Federal law and data

Louisiana law

Other

American Public Power Association (trade group — public power) · Association of Louisiana Electric Cooperatives (trade group — co-ops)
Texas S.B. 921 (2009) bill analysis — electric cooperative member access to meetings and records
Pennsylvania PUC report on fair market value in water and wastewater acquisitions (Aug. 15, 2024) · Spotlight PA on Pennsylvania's Act 12
NCSL, State Policies Defining EMS as Essential (updated July 17, 2026)
Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Community Broadband Networks (advocacy — municipal broadband counts)
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer · Louisiana Legislative Auditor reports

Kingfish — City of Alexandria

What is the Rapides Island Water Association?

The short version

Fast facts

The name, and the territory

Where the water actually comes from

The report card

The fluoride notice

What they built

The money

Who runs it

Who regulates it

A note on 501(c)(12)

Why federal debt shapes the map

How to check your own water in five minutes

Sources and further reading

Who owns your utility, and who answers for it

Sign up for The Kingfish Project

The short version

The word that causes the trouble

The nine owners

Electricity: three families, one of them is Nebraska

Louisiana's version of the rules

Water: the law reaches everyone, the ownership reaches everywhere

The federal debt that draws the map

And the statutes that set the price of a sale

Sewer: the permit doesn't care who owns you

Broadband, fire, ambulance: the same question, fewer rules

Who is exempt

Central Louisiana has all of them in the ground

What we don't know yet

How to find out who owns yours, in about ten minutes

The questions worth asking about any utility

Sources and further reading