Jackson’s “water is safe because it meets the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Ted Henifin, the federally appointed interim third-party manager who is in charge of overseeing the Mississippi capital city’s water system, told a federal judge on Wednesday.
A federal judge has allowed about 1,000 children diagnosed with lead poisoning to proceed in a case against the City of Jackson and the Mississippi State Department of Health in a March 23 order.
Dr. Robert A. Leishear explains how water hammers cause nearly all water main breaks in industrialized cities, but says they can be stopped.
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed on Sept. 16, 2022, are seeking immediate attention to the water problems affecting Jackson, Miss.
A one-year-old in Laurel, Miss., had a blood lead level that was too high, which led Mississippi health officials to visit the city in Jones County in 2015. The child’s blood lead level of 43µg/dL was close to the 45µg/dL level that would have required urgent medical attention.
In two lawsuits New York-based attorney Corey Stern filed in October 2021 at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, plaintiffs seek $3 billion in damages due to claims about effects of lead in the water in Jackson, Miss., and public officials’ negligence about doing anything about it.
Lawyers representing hundreds of Jackson children have sued the City of Jackson, Trilogy Engineering Services, and dozens of individual employees and public officials over allegations of persistent failures to address corrosion control in the Jackson water system. The lawsuit claims that spiking lead levels over the last decade and inaction on the part of public officials has resulted in lead-poisoned children in the city.
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.
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