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Many are hoping that new leadership at the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission ends the discord that has hindered management of the troubled agency and diverted attention from fixing its aging, failing water mains.

"Whoever they put there has to be on a short leash," Montgomery County Councilman Marc Elrich said. "That agency has to improve."

Jerry N. Johnson was chosen last week to be general manager of the water and sewer agency that serves Montgomery and Prince George's counties, pending salary negotiations. Background reports on Johnson, previously the general manager of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, were finished this week, but await commissioners' final review.

If Johnson takes over at WSSC, he will be dealing with a six-member board whose decisions often split 3-3 along county lines.

Beyond governance, the infrastructure that WSSC oversees is crumbling. Montgomery customers had to boil water a year ago because of water main breaks. Rescuers were called to Bethesda in December when a 66-inch main broke and the torrent trapped motorists.

Harsh critics of the WSSC, including state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., say they are willing to give Johnson a chance.

"There are no problems that can't be addressed by competent management," said Miller (D-Dist. 27) of Chesapeake Beach.

Johnson is likely to get a hands-off approach from Montgomery County legislators, at least at first. For each of the past several years, lawmakers have proposed sweeping bills to reconstitute the agency.

Those proposals come from the perception that the agency is dysfunctional, said Del. Brian J. Feldman, chairman of the Montgomery House delegation.

"Logic would follow that the political momentum or desire for making adjustments would not be what there has been in the past. That's a fair assessment to make," said Feldman (D-Dist. 15) of Potomac.

During the 2009 session, Del. Alfred C. Carr Jr. proposed adding a seventh member. He withdrew the measure for lack of support.

"This problem of the splits, and the need to have a tiebreaker, is still there," said Carr (D-Dist. 18) of Kensington. "We'll need to address it either sooner or later. There didn't seem to be a lot of agreement in the Montgomery County Council or the Montgomery County delegation on how to address this problem."

Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) may have eased tensions on the board with his decision, confirmed by his staff this week, not to reappoint WSSC Commissioner Juanita Miller.

An outspoken advocate for minority contracting, promotion and hiring at the agency, Miller was seen as a divisive force and an obstacle in the search for a new general manager.

In her place, the county executive has nominated Antonio L. Jones of Largo, co-owner of a management training and consulting business.

Still, activists are concerned about Jerry Johnson's part in the disclosure and response to the discovery of lead in water in Washington from 2001 to 2004.

"Jerry Johnson has, in my experience, bar none, been the worst communicator, been the most obstinate and least open to working with the public of any water system operator I have encountered," wrote Paul Schwartz, national policy coordinator for Clean Water Action, in a letter to the Montgomery County Council.

A 2004 investigation overseen by Eric H. Holder Jr. — then of law firm Covington and Burling, now U.S. attorney general — said Johnson spent much time and attention controlling the message to residents. He and WASA chief engineer Michael Marcotte should have concentrated more on eliminating fairly high levels of lead leaching, the report suggested.

Mike Miller, who criticized WSSC incompetence in a letter to Jack Johnson on June 15, said this week that he had no concerns about Jerry Johnson leading the utility.

"I'm certain he believed lead content was not a danger," Miller said. "He probably thought it would cause needless, undue alarm."

WSSC member Roscoe Moore from Montgomery County said he would insist that the general manager and commissioners set a plan for informing the public when "any adverse" event occurs. Moore is a veterinarian and an epidemiologist whose occupational and public health work includes infectious diseases and water-borne toxins.

Of WASA's possible mistakes in handling high lead levels in water, Moore said, "I don't think that's a trivial matter."

"These things happen and it happened on his watch," Moore said.

But Moore said he believes that three factors could offset concerns: Johnson's overall past performance, which included erasing WASA's $8 million deficit; the fact that county officials "have vouched for him," and the establishment of a "dissemination strategy."

Told of Moore's comments about making sure there's a "dissemination strategy," Jerry Johnson said he looks forward to working with the commissioners and seeing if he can "be of assistance."

But he said he would not comment because he has not talked to Moore about it.

"Any organization that's serving the public should have some plan for how information is disseminated," Johnson said.

Sandra A. Allen, a business consultant who served as a Montgomery County WSSC member from 2005 to 2007, said she believes Johnson is more than capable to lead the agency.

"He will have to use all of his many years of leadership to navigate political waters to maximize the possibility," Allen said. "But the focus has been on the politics. That is very distracting to the mission. The energy needs to be put into clean water, aging infrastructure, good governance and strategic planning."

Across the country, at the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland, Calif., officials have navigated tricky political waters.

Like WSSC, the district serves two counties. WSSC has about 1.8 million customers; East Bay has about 1.3 million.

Unlike WSSC, East Bay is ruled by a seven-member elected board. For years, issues split 4-3, as representatives from the side of Berkeley Oakland Hills that supplies the water battled representatives from the side that uses it, spokesman Charles Hardy said.

East Bay, formed in 1923, has had only nine general managers. The latest, Dennis Diemer, a former engineer, has had the job for about 13 years. Hardy credited him with framing issues in a way that can rise above parochialism.

Now, a 5-2 split signals a very controversial vote, Hardy said.

"If we had three members on the other side of the hills, and three members on this side, we'd be just like you," Hardy said.