The Jackson, Mississippi Water Crisis (August/September 2022)
The first 40 seconds of the following video includes the viral tweet by Mississippi Today reporter Molly Minta where she recorded contaminated water coming out of her sink.
Jackson residents have had to deal with not having reliable access to clean running water for many years now. The city was already under a boil-water notice months before the flooding, residents had previously gone without water for weeks back in the winter of 2021 after a winter storm, and in 2020 the EPA issued a warning to Jackson residents that the water could contain dangerous contaminants, including E. coli. Even then, residents have been warned about elevated lead levels in the water that were first discovered back in 2016. The August flooding, while the case of this particular crisis, exacerbated existing problems in the city’s water system. In fact, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba stated in response to the 2022 flood, “I have said on multiple occasions that it’s not a matter of ‘if’ our system would fail, but a matter of ‘when’ our system would fail.”
The problems with the Jackson water system stem from decades of disinvestment. There have been few infrastructure improvements to the water system since it was originally created in the 1900s which means that many of the pipes are in need of serious repair and are susceptible to corrosion.Since at least the 1940s, Jackson city officials have called for the water system to be improved, but the high cost and number of repairs needed have made fixing the water system a difficult task for generations of city mayors, especially as the issues with the water system have compounded over time. Mayor Lumumba stated that it is estimated the city would need around $2 billion to modernize the water system.
