JXN Water, the entity in control of Jackson’s water system, is challenging a state-imposed boil water notice for the cities of Jackson and Flowood after tests detected e. Coli in the water. Interim Third-Party Manager Ted Henifin suggested Thursday that the Mississippi State Department of Health’s Public Health Laboratory may have accidentally contaminated its own samples with E. coli.
Jackson’s troubled water system has suffered multiple system-wide failures since 2021, including in late December 2022 that continued into this month amid a winter freeze.
The City of Jackson is working to improve water availability after identifying “approximately 20 to 25 active leaks,” with crews “searching and repairing leaks,” Mayor
Rhea Williams-Bishop, director of Mississippi and New Orleans programs at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation writes that “together, we can be the ones who create the environments and communities that build up our children, rather than tear them down.” She encourages Mississippians to come together to solve the Jackson water crisis—and then to repair the systems that led to it.
John Tierre can count the days since Jackson received a citywide boil water notice. He can count the money, too. Every day his restaurant, Johnny T’s Bistro & Blues on Farish Street, bleeds a little more profit thanks to a water crisis with no end in sight.
Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, writes that the capital city is at a “critical juncture,” calling on leaders to collaborate and take advantage of the funds available for necessary infrastructure work and decide upon a viable solution.
Capital-city residents could be dealing with rolling precautionary boil-water notices for up to another year, as the winterization process at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant continues. But Jackson’s mayor and an expert consultant from Cornerstone Engineering remain adamant that the water remains entirely safe to drink.
The capital city is once again without clean water, after the City of Jackson announced that a bad batch of coagulant chemicals forced the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant to shut down a significant portion of its water production system.
Jackson residents have safe water again this week, after the city announced today that it was lifting the boil-water notice put in place after a control-panel fire at O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant.
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