“These white folks don’t want us all to own our role and to work together; they want to finger-point at a Black mayor who inherited a billion-dollar-plus water-sewer crisis, fixate only on recent missteps and, thus, abdicate all other responsibility,” MFP Editor and CEO Donna Ladd writes. “That simplistic approach continues the old cycles.”
For the first time in recent memory, virtually all stakeholders in the future of Mississippi’s capital city came together Wednesday to discuss the Jackson water crisis that has left more than 160,000 residents without clean water for over a month.
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.
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.
Working Together Jackson, a nonpartisan organization, responds to the garbage-disposal debate by asking city leaders to immediately approve the contract with Richard’s Disposal.
An ailing water system brought EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan to Jackson in the first place, and that same system had displaced the students of Wilkins Elementary to Van Winkle Elementary. Later in the day, Jackson residents would learn of a third crisis: yet another citywide boil-water alert.
Regulators and public-works officials agree that Jackson’s water-treatment facilities have completed key improvements ahead of a looming Environmental Protection Agency deadline, but much work remains to bring the capital city’s system into compliance with public health regulations.
Parts of Mississippi’s capital city is seeing a “saturation” of additional police presence that Gov. Tate Reeves promises will counter a spike in crime and violence that has worsened since the pandemic began. But violence experts warn that a swelling police presence may not be effective, and it actually harm communities.
Dr. Jill Biden has joined Mississippi’s effort to bolster its struggling vaccination campaign, visiting a vaccination site at Jackson State University today and encouraging the public to protect themselves and their community with shots.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
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