JEA says public power provides benefits

JEA’s website makes the best case for keeping them publicly owned.

Benefits of Public Power

As your not-for-profit, community-owned utility, JEA is committed to providing you the most reliable service at the lowest possible cost in an environmentally friendly way.

Linemen
JEA lineman working from bucket trucks

In addition to running day-to-day operations of the utility, JEA employees are also customers, paying for utility services just like every other customer.

Most Utilities are Regulated Monopolies

You may not realize it, but all utilities in Florida and most across the United States have a regulated service territory and are monopolies. Your property location determines who your utility provider is. One reason for this is because electricity, water and sewer are essential services that require billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure to serve the community. And that infrastructure must be in place to meet today’s and future needs. Utilities typically plan and invest for future generations, decades in advance. JEA is regulated with a defined service territory, and strives to serve our customers and community with high quality electric, water and sewer services at a competitive price – and with a positive customer experience.

Why Public Power?

Jacksonville Family
JEA provides essential utility services to families like yours across Northeast Florida.
  1. As an essential service, electricity and water must be reliably produced and delivered 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
    Municipal electric utilities—also referred to as public power entities—are well suited to deliver this essential service, because the only reason they exist is to provide the service to the communities that own them – not to make profits for shareholders.
  2. Public power and water utilities are directly accountable to the people they serve through local elected or appointed officials.
    There are more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities in the United States, serving more than 47 million people, or about 14 percent of the nation’s electricity consumers. These utilities are operated by local governments to provide communities with reliable, responsive, not-for-profit electric, water and sewer service. 
  3. Investments in infrastructure improvements.
    Since JEA was asked to take over the City’s water and sewer systems in 1997, JEA has invested $2 billion in repairing and upgrading these systems as well as improving the whole wastewater treatment process. When JEA took over, the Buckman wastewater treatment plant was one of the worst in the nation. Today it is one of the best. And JEA has reduced the nitrogen that it puts into the St. Johns River as a result of the wastewater treatment process by 58%.