“Water is dignity”: Residents in majority-Black Jackson, Mississippi left without drinkable water

Jackson is 82.5% Black, and has been hit with multiple water crises in recent months.  As of September 2, the vast majority of the residents of the city of Jackson, Mississippi—over 150,000—still have no access to safe drinking water. The Jackson water crisis began on August 30 when flooding caused the pumps at the main water treatment facility to fail. This left most residents without clean water and many with no water at all due to low water pressure…. Water coming out of the pipes in Jackson is discolored and cloudy, if any water comes out at all… Many residents do not have enough water “to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs…”  “The water crisis is the newest crisis in a series of shutdowns for Jackson’s water system,” Bezel Jupiter, local activist, told Peoples Dispatch. “The same thing happened last year after a winter storm. This has been happening for three decades. After every crisis the city has only gotten temporary solutions.” Days of rain flooded the Pearl River and the Ross R. Barnett Reservoir, which provides water to the city, overwhelming Jackson’s water treatment system with contaminated floodwaters. Issues with water pressure can be linked to water pump failures due to inadequate and untimely repairs at two major water treatment centers: O.B. Curtis and J.H. Fewell. …  After schools in Jackson were desegregated in the ‘70s and ‘80s, white residents left the city en masse.  Their departure meant a significant decrease in public funding as they constituted a large portion of the wealthy tax base.  Today, Jackson is now yet another Black-majority city undergoing infrastructural failure.