THIRD WORLD USA
‘There’s no excuse for this’: thousands in Mississippi city still without water weeks after storms
Jackson, a city of mostly Black residents, is the only city in the state still having issues.
Oliver Laughland in Jackson, Mississippi
Thu, March 4, 2021, THE GUARDIAN
As the sound of rainwater droplets crescendoed around him, Rodrick Readus stood by his front door and took a moment to reflect on the many indignities of the past fortnight.
“It’s just the simple fact you can’t wash your hands,” he said. “You can’t take a bath. Every time I touch something I know I’m not clean.”
Like every other resident in his two-story apartment complex, Readus has been without running water since mid-February, when Jackson, Mississippi’s state capital, was lashed by two back-to-back winter storms. They crippled the city’s ailing water infrastructure and left thousands of residents now entering their third week without flowing pipes. While most national and international attention has focused on the aftermath of the storms in Texas, Mississippi has been largely ignored.
Buckets, jugs, bottles and plastic trays litter the ground outside Readus’s apartment complex, many are perched under gutters to capture the rainwater before it disperses into the mud. It’s the water he uses to flush his toilet.
The 47-year-old self-employed home repairman has no car, meaning he relies on family members and neighbours to drop off small containers of non-potable water to wash his dishes, which are piling up in the sink. He has already spent a few hundred dollars on bottled water to drink, an amount he simply cannot afford.
“We are all citizens and there’s no excuse for this,” Readus said. “Don’t treat us as second class because we don’t have the things that others do.”
The winter storms, which crippled power sources throughout the US south, brought record low temperatures to parts of Mississippi. In Jackson, where 80% of residents are Black, the cold led to at least 96 breakages in the city’s ageing pipes, which, combined with power outages, lead to catastrophically low pressure throughout its water system. As of Monday evening 35 breakages remained, and although pressure was slowly coming back, thousands of residents are without water. Most of them in the city’s south, which sits on higher ground and is furthest away from the treatment plant. A citywide boil notice remains in effect and officials have offered no timeline for full restoration.
K’Acia Drummer, a 27 year-old middle school teacher, also lives in south Jackson. She tried in vain to stick it out at her apartment after the ice receded last month, but with no running water and the increasing cost ($40 a day) of purchasing bottled water, she elected to leave and stay with friends. She returned home on Tuesday hoping to see her water restored but felt a sinking feeling as the taps dribbled an insignificant stream and her toilet still wouldn’t fill.
“I feel displaced,” she said. “Now I know what it feels like to live without basic necessities, and it’s one of those things that puts you in a different place mentally. My anxiety has been through the roof.”
With no shower water, she plans to bathe at her gym. With no functioning toilet, she has decided to “take in less fluids”.
Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, has said the city requires $2bn to revitalize its ailing piping and treatment system. He compared the city’s pipes to peanut brittle, explaining that as repair crews move in to fix the pipes, one repair can lead to another breakage.
Mississippi, American’s poorest state, has long faced chronic infrastructure problems. A 2020 report card published by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state a D+ grade, noting decaying systems across roads, energy, solid waste and a host of other essential services. On its drinking water systems, the report noted some were losing as much as 50% of treated water due to breakages and that certain systems were still dependent on pipes laid in the 1920s. “Many of these networks have aged past their useful life span,” the report notes.
But at a press conference on Monday, Mayor Lumumba made clear that the changing climate was exacerbating the issue.
“One thing that is clear is that our winters are colder, our summers are hotter and the rain we experience is more abundant,” he said, pointing out that the city’s outdoor water treatment facility was simply not built to endure the cold. “And so not only do we need this investment because of the ageing infrastructure we need this investment because of the increased pressure that these extreme weather conditions are taking.”
Jackson is far from unique, as Texas’s widespread power outages last month revealed, but with systems across the US faltering under the climate crisis, experts predict these catastrophic events are likely to become more and more frequent.
“The climate is changing. Infrastructure is ageing. Funding for updating infrastructure is decreasing. And we as a society do not like thinking about paying for infrastructure, we only typically do when there is something as dramatic as the Flint water crisis or hurricane Katrina,” said Professor Martin Doyle, a director of the water policy program at Duke University.
In Jackson, the city has moved to raise sales taxes in order to pay for water and sewage upgrades in the wake of the crisis, but Mayor Lumumba made clear on Monday he believed the federal government should also be offering financial assistance.
Doyle points out that until the 1980s the federal government was a major source of water infrastructure funding, which was “largely taken away … so cities and utilities are now on their own financially and they are having to figure it out”.
The issue was the subject of a major investigation by the Guardian last year.
At the Forest Hill high school in south Jackson a steady stream of residents queued for non-potable water being distributed by national guard troops on Tuesday morning. Residents came with buckets, milk bottles, bins and tankers, anything to bring home as many gallons as possible.
Many did not want to talk during what was an intimate, and for some almost humiliating, moment of need.
But Cedric Weeks, a local restaurant owner who had been forced to temporarily close his business, took a moment to reflect.
“I saw [the water crisis in] Flint and I didn’t flinch at it,” he said. “But to be in that predicament now. I see the major need of water. I’ve never lived without it. So to have to haul it and to have to flush toilets and take baths with what you hauled … it’s terrible, you know.”
It was something one of the troops themselves could relate to.
Specialist Christopher Shannon, out to assist residents and media with queries about the operation, had also been living without water for two weeks. “You hate to see people struggle, but we love to come out and help,” he said. “No one expected it. Nothing is built for winter out here … You can prepare all you want, but if you’re not built for it, you’re not built for it.”
Oliver Laughland in Jackson, Mississippi
Thu, March 4, 2021, THE GUARDIAN
As the sound of rainwater droplets crescendoed around him, Rodrick Readus stood by his front door and took a moment to reflect on the many indignities of the past fortnight.
“It’s just the simple fact you can’t wash your hands,” he said. “You can’t take a bath. Every time I touch something I know I’m not clean.”
Like every other resident in his two-story apartment complex, Readus has been without running water since mid-February, when Jackson, Mississippi’s state capital, was lashed by two back-to-back winter storms. They crippled the city’s ailing water infrastructure and left thousands of residents now entering their third week without flowing pipes. While most national and international attention has focused on the aftermath of the storms in Texas, Mississippi has been largely ignored.
Buckets, jugs, bottles and plastic trays litter the ground outside Readus’s apartment complex, many are perched under gutters to capture the rainwater before it disperses into the mud. It’s the water he uses to flush his toilet.
The 47-year-old self-employed home repairman has no car, meaning he relies on family members and neighbours to drop off small containers of non-potable water to wash his dishes, which are piling up in the sink. He has already spent a few hundred dollars on bottled water to drink, an amount he simply cannot afford.
“We are all citizens and there’s no excuse for this,” Readus said. “Don’t treat us as second class because we don’t have the things that others do.”
The winter storms, which crippled power sources throughout the US south, brought record low temperatures to parts of Mississippi. In Jackson, where 80% of residents are Black, the cold led to at least 96 breakages in the city’s ageing pipes, which, combined with power outages, lead to catastrophically low pressure throughout its water system. As of Monday evening 35 breakages remained, and although pressure was slowly coming back, thousands of residents are without water. Most of them in the city’s south, which sits on higher ground and is furthest away from the treatment plant. A citywide boil notice remains in effect and officials have offered no timeline for full restoration.
K’Acia Drummer, a 27 year-old middle school teacher, also lives in south Jackson. She tried in vain to stick it out at her apartment after the ice receded last month, but with no running water and the increasing cost ($40 a day) of purchasing bottled water, she elected to leave and stay with friends. She returned home on Tuesday hoping to see her water restored but felt a sinking feeling as the taps dribbled an insignificant stream and her toilet still wouldn’t fill.
“I feel displaced,” she said. “Now I know what it feels like to live without basic necessities, and it’s one of those things that puts you in a different place mentally. My anxiety has been through the roof.”
With no shower water, she plans to bathe at her gym. With no functioning toilet, she has decided to “take in less fluids”.
Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, has said the city requires $2bn to revitalize its ailing piping and treatment system. He compared the city’s pipes to peanut brittle, explaining that as repair crews move in to fix the pipes, one repair can lead to another breakage.
Mississippi, American’s poorest state, has long faced chronic infrastructure problems. A 2020 report card published by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state a D+ grade, noting decaying systems across roads, energy, solid waste and a host of other essential services. On its drinking water systems, the report noted some were losing as much as 50% of treated water due to breakages and that certain systems were still dependent on pipes laid in the 1920s. “Many of these networks have aged past their useful life span,” the report notes.
But at a press conference on Monday, Mayor Lumumba made clear that the changing climate was exacerbating the issue.
“One thing that is clear is that our winters are colder, our summers are hotter and the rain we experience is more abundant,” he said, pointing out that the city’s outdoor water treatment facility was simply not built to endure the cold. “And so not only do we need this investment because of the ageing infrastructure we need this investment because of the increased pressure that these extreme weather conditions are taking.”
Jackson is far from unique, as Texas’s widespread power outages last month revealed, but with systems across the US faltering under the climate crisis, experts predict these catastrophic events are likely to become more and more frequent.
“The climate is changing. Infrastructure is ageing. Funding for updating infrastructure is decreasing. And we as a society do not like thinking about paying for infrastructure, we only typically do when there is something as dramatic as the Flint water crisis or hurricane Katrina,” said Professor Martin Doyle, a director of the water policy program at Duke University.
In Jackson, the city has moved to raise sales taxes in order to pay for water and sewage upgrades in the wake of the crisis, but Mayor Lumumba made clear on Monday he believed the federal government should also be offering financial assistance.
Doyle points out that until the 1980s the federal government was a major source of water infrastructure funding, which was “largely taken away … so cities and utilities are now on their own financially and they are having to figure it out”.
The issue was the subject of a major investigation by the Guardian last year.
At the Forest Hill high school in south Jackson a steady stream of residents queued for non-potable water being distributed by national guard troops on Tuesday morning. Residents came with buckets, milk bottles, bins and tankers, anything to bring home as many gallons as possible.
Many did not want to talk during what was an intimate, and for some almost humiliating, moment of need.
But Cedric Weeks, a local restaurant owner who had been forced to temporarily close his business, took a moment to reflect.
“I saw [the water crisis in] Flint and I didn’t flinch at it,” he said. “But to be in that predicament now. I see the major need of water. I’ve never lived without it. So to have to haul it and to have to flush toilets and take baths with what you hauled … it’s terrible, you know.”
It was something one of the troops themselves could relate to.
Specialist Christopher Shannon, out to assist residents and media with queries about the operation, had also been living without water for two weeks. “You hate to see people struggle, but we love to come out and help,” he said. “No one expected it. Nothing is built for winter out here … You can prepare all you want, but if you’re not built for it, you’re not built for it.”
Tue, March 2, 2022
Mississippi's largest city is still without full access to water after sub-zero temperatures severely damaged its aging infrastructure. Jackson, a city of mostly Black residents, is the only city in the state still having issues.
Janet Shamlian has more on the growing frustration.
Video Transcript
- Extreme weather is also creating a water crisis in Mississippi's largest city. The huge winter storm that devastated much of the country last month has also left Jackson, Mississippi without drinkable water for the past two weeks. The National Guard was called to Jackson to distribute water to its 160,000 people, and our Janet Shamlian is there.
JANET SHAMLIAN: Eddie Mitchell has been coming to this distribution site for two weeks to get these jugs filled with water he can't even drink.
EDDIE MITCHELL: Just for flushing. We don't wash dishes with it or nothing.
JANET SHAMLIAN: The 75-year-old veteran is among thousands in Jackson about to enter their third week without full access to water. How hard is it on people here?
EDDIE MITCHELL: Some people don't have water-- I mean, don't have a vehicle to come get water. Be here at 5:30 or 6:00 this afternoon when the line stretches around the corner.
JANET SHAMLIAN: There's such desperation, some drivers seeing this spouting pipe, pulled off a busy road to fill buckets. The entire city whose residents are 82% Black is under a boil water notice. The unprecedented mid-February freeze strained Jackson's aging system, dozens of pipes burst. Charles Williams is the public works director. What is the status of getting water back to the people in the city?
CHARLES WILLIAMS: Well, we feel like a majority of the city has received water pressure back. So that is a good thing, but we are concerned about our residents who live farthest away from the plant.
JANET SHAMLIAN: City leaders say it could cost more than $2 billion to fix the infrastructure, in a city with a $300 million budget. Communities nearby dealt with similar outages after the storm, but Jackson is the only Mississippi city still struggling with water weeks later.
SUMMER WILLIAMS: The city wasn't prepared and there was no warning about there not being water. It just stopped working unexpectedly.
JANET SHAMLIAN: Summer Williams, eight months pregnant, wants more definitive answers for her growing family.
SUMMER WILLIAMS: Because I'm due soon and only thing that's on my mind is how I'm going to handle it when the baby gets here.
JANET SHAMLIAN: As the city works to repair water main breaks, Jackson's mayor says, they need help from the state and federal government to update the system, but the people we've talked to here say they need a different kind of help. They feel like they are not seeing the mass distributions of drinkable water that they've seen in other cities. Anthony.
ANTHONY MASON: Two weeks without drinking water. Janet, thank you very much.
- Extreme weather is also creating a water crisis in Mississippi's largest city. The huge winter storm that devastated much of the country last month has also left Jackson, Mississippi without drinkable water for the past two weeks. The National Guard was called to Jackson to distribute water to its 160,000 people, and our Janet Shamlian is there.
JANET SHAMLIAN: Eddie Mitchell has been coming to this distribution site for two weeks to get these jugs filled with water he can't even drink.
EDDIE MITCHELL: Just for flushing. We don't wash dishes with it or nothing.
JANET SHAMLIAN: The 75-year-old veteran is among thousands in Jackson about to enter their third week without full access to water. How hard is it on people here?
EDDIE MITCHELL: Some people don't have water-- I mean, don't have a vehicle to come get water. Be here at 5:30 or 6:00 this afternoon when the line stretches around the corner.
JANET SHAMLIAN: There's such desperation, some drivers seeing this spouting pipe, pulled off a busy road to fill buckets. The entire city whose residents are 82% Black is under a boil water notice. The unprecedented mid-February freeze strained Jackson's aging system, dozens of pipes burst. Charles Williams is the public works director. What is the status of getting water back to the people in the city?
CHARLES WILLIAMS: Well, we feel like a majority of the city has received water pressure back. So that is a good thing, but we are concerned about our residents who live farthest away from the plant.
JANET SHAMLIAN: City leaders say it could cost more than $2 billion to fix the infrastructure, in a city with a $300 million budget. Communities nearby dealt with similar outages after the storm, but Jackson is the only Mississippi city still struggling with water weeks later.
SUMMER WILLIAMS: The city wasn't prepared and there was no warning about there not being water. It just stopped working unexpectedly.
JANET SHAMLIAN: Summer Williams, eight months pregnant, wants more definitive answers for her growing family.
SUMMER WILLIAMS: Because I'm due soon and only thing that's on my mind is how I'm going to handle it when the baby gets here.
JANET SHAMLIAN: As the city works to repair water main breaks, Jackson's mayor says, they need help from the state and federal government to update the system, but the people we've talked to here say they need a different kind of help. They feel like they are not seeing the mass distributions of drinkable water that they've seen in other cities. Anthony.
ANTHONY MASON: Two weeks without drinking water. Janet, thank you very much.
Water crisis continues in Mississippi,
weeks after cold snap
Winter Weather Water Woes Mississippi Army National Guard Sgt. Chase Toussaint with the Maneuver Area Training Equipment Site of Camp Shelby, right, fills 5-gallon buckets with non-potable water, Monday, March 1, 2021, at a Jackson, Miss., water distribution site on the New Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church parking lot. Water for flushing toilets was being distributed at seven sites in Mississippi's capital city — more than 10 days after winter storms wreaked havoc on the city's water system because the system is still struggling to maintain consistent water pressure, authorities said. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
JEFF MARTIN, LEAH WILLINGHAM and EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Wed, March 3, 2021,
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi’s largest city is still struggling with water problems more than two weeks after winter storms and freezing weather ravaged the system in Jackson, knocking out water for drinking and making it impossible for many to even flush their toilets.
Residents in the city of 160,000 are still being warned to boil any water that does come out of the faucets.
“I pray it comes back on,” Jackson resident Nita Smith said. “I’m not sure how much more of this we can take.”
Smith has had no water at home for nearly three weeks.
Smith is concerned about her mother who has diabetes. Her mother and most of the other older people on her street don’t drive, so Smith has been helping them get water to clean themselves and flush their toilets.
A key focus of city crews is filling the system's water tanks to an optimal level. But, public works director Charles Williams said Wednesday that fish, tree limbs and other debris have clogged screens where water moves from a reservoir into a treatment plant. That caused pressure to drop for the entire water system.
“Today was not a good day for us,” Williams said.
He said about a fourth of Jackson's customers remained without running water. That is more than 10,000 connections, with most serving multiple people.
City officials on Wednesday continued distributing water for flushing toilets at several pick-up points. But they're giving no specific timeline for resolving problems. Workers continue to fix dozens of water main breaks and leaks.
The crisis has taken a toll on businesses. Jeff Good is co-owner of three Jackson restaurants, and two of them remained closed Wednesday. In a Facebook update, Good said the businesses have insurance, but he’s concerned about his employees.
“We will not be financially ruined,” Good wrote. “The spirits of our team members are my biggest concern. A true malaise and depression is setting in."
Mississippi's capital city is not alone in water problems. More than two weeks have passed since the cold wave shut down the main power grid in Texas, leaving millions in freezing homes, causing about 50 deaths and disabling thousands of public water systems serving those millions.
Four public water systems in Texas remained out of commission Wednesday, affecting 456 customers, and 225 systems still have 135,299 customers boiling their tap water, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Also, 208 of the state’s 254 counties are still reporting public water system issues.
Bonnie Bishop, 68, and her husband, Mike, 63, have been without water at their Jackson home for 14 days. Both have health problems.
She's recovering after months in the hospital with the coronavirus. She's home but still in therapy to learn how to walk again and deals with neuropathy in her hands and feet.
She has not been able to soak her feet in warm water, something that usually provides relief for the neuropathy, or to help her husband gather water to boil for cooking for cleaning.
Mike Bishop just had elbow surgery. The first week the couple was without water, he still had staples in his arm and was hauling 5-gallon containers from his truck, his wife said. Bonnie Bishop said she told him not to strain himself, but he wouldn’t listen. They feel they have no choice.
On Monday, the couple drove 25 miles (40 kilometers) to Mike’s mother’s house to do laundry.
Jackson's water system has not been able to provide a sustainable flow of water throughout the city since the mid-February storms, city officials say.
The system “basically crashed like a computer and now we’re trying to rebuild it,” Williams said at a recent briefing.
The city's water mains are more than a century old, and its infrastructure needs went unaddressed for decades, Democratic Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has said.
“We more than likely have more than a $2 billion issue with our infrastructure,” he said.
Jackson voters in 2014 approved a 1-cent local sales tax to pay for improvements to roads and water and sewer systems. On Tuesday, the city council voted to seek legislative approval for another election to double that local tax to 2 cents a dollar.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves would have to agree to letting Jackson have the tax election.
“I do think it’s really important that the city of Jackson start collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money,” Reeves said Tuesday.
Jackson has had problems for years with its water billing system and with the quality of water.
Melanie Deaver Hanlin, who was without water for 14 days, has been flushing toilets with pool water and showering at friends’ homes. She said Jackson’s water system “needs to be fixed, not patched.”
“That’s the issue now — poor maintenance for far too long," Hanlin said. "And Jackson residents are paying the price.”
___
Associated Press writer Terry Wallace contributed from Dallas. Martin reported from Marietta, Georgia.
Winter Weather Water Woes Mississippi Army National Guard Sgt. Chase Toussaint with the Maneuver Area Training Equipment Site of Camp Shelby, right, fills 5-gallon buckets with non-potable water, Monday, March 1, 2021, at a Jackson, Miss., water distribution site on the New Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church parking lot. Water for flushing toilets was being distributed at seven sites in Mississippi's capital city — more than 10 days after winter storms wreaked havoc on the city's water system because the system is still struggling to maintain consistent water pressure, authorities said. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
JEFF MARTIN, LEAH WILLINGHAM and EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Wed, March 3, 2021,
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi’s largest city is still struggling with water problems more than two weeks after winter storms and freezing weather ravaged the system in Jackson, knocking out water for drinking and making it impossible for many to even flush their toilets.
Residents in the city of 160,000 are still being warned to boil any water that does come out of the faucets.
“I pray it comes back on,” Jackson resident Nita Smith said. “I’m not sure how much more of this we can take.”
Smith has had no water at home for nearly three weeks.
Smith is concerned about her mother who has diabetes. Her mother and most of the other older people on her street don’t drive, so Smith has been helping them get water to clean themselves and flush their toilets.
A key focus of city crews is filling the system's water tanks to an optimal level. But, public works director Charles Williams said Wednesday that fish, tree limbs and other debris have clogged screens where water moves from a reservoir into a treatment plant. That caused pressure to drop for the entire water system.
“Today was not a good day for us,” Williams said.
He said about a fourth of Jackson's customers remained without running water. That is more than 10,000 connections, with most serving multiple people.
City officials on Wednesday continued distributing water for flushing toilets at several pick-up points. But they're giving no specific timeline for resolving problems. Workers continue to fix dozens of water main breaks and leaks.
The crisis has taken a toll on businesses. Jeff Good is co-owner of three Jackson restaurants, and two of them remained closed Wednesday. In a Facebook update, Good said the businesses have insurance, but he’s concerned about his employees.
“We will not be financially ruined,” Good wrote. “The spirits of our team members are my biggest concern. A true malaise and depression is setting in."
Mississippi's capital city is not alone in water problems. More than two weeks have passed since the cold wave shut down the main power grid in Texas, leaving millions in freezing homes, causing about 50 deaths and disabling thousands of public water systems serving those millions.
Four public water systems in Texas remained out of commission Wednesday, affecting 456 customers, and 225 systems still have 135,299 customers boiling their tap water, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Also, 208 of the state’s 254 counties are still reporting public water system issues.
Bonnie Bishop, 68, and her husband, Mike, 63, have been without water at their Jackson home for 14 days. Both have health problems.
She's recovering after months in the hospital with the coronavirus. She's home but still in therapy to learn how to walk again and deals with neuropathy in her hands and feet.
She has not been able to soak her feet in warm water, something that usually provides relief for the neuropathy, or to help her husband gather water to boil for cooking for cleaning.
Mike Bishop just had elbow surgery. The first week the couple was without water, he still had staples in his arm and was hauling 5-gallon containers from his truck, his wife said. Bonnie Bishop said she told him not to strain himself, but he wouldn’t listen. They feel they have no choice.
On Monday, the couple drove 25 miles (40 kilometers) to Mike’s mother’s house to do laundry.
Jackson's water system has not been able to provide a sustainable flow of water throughout the city since the mid-February storms, city officials say.
The system “basically crashed like a computer and now we’re trying to rebuild it,” Williams said at a recent briefing.
The city's water mains are more than a century old, and its infrastructure needs went unaddressed for decades, Democratic Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has said.
“We more than likely have more than a $2 billion issue with our infrastructure,” he said.
Jackson voters in 2014 approved a 1-cent local sales tax to pay for improvements to roads and water and sewer systems. On Tuesday, the city council voted to seek legislative approval for another election to double that local tax to 2 cents a dollar.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves would have to agree to letting Jackson have the tax election.
“I do think it’s really important that the city of Jackson start collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money,” Reeves said Tuesday.
Jackson has had problems for years with its water billing system and with the quality of water.
Melanie Deaver Hanlin, who was without water for 14 days, has been flushing toilets with pool water and showering at friends’ homes. She said Jackson’s water system “needs to be fixed, not patched.”
“That’s the issue now — poor maintenance for far too long," Hanlin said. "And Jackson residents are paying the price.”
___
Associated Press writer Terry Wallace contributed from Dallas. Martin reported from Marietta, Georgia.
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