The Water Crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, Is a Dire Warning Sign

A new episode of the Mother Jones Podcast looks at the crumbling infrastructure in one of America’s most vulnerable cities.

Jackson residents get water from a distribution site on March 7.Michael M. Santiago/Getty

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Jackson, Mississippi, is finally on its way out of a nightmare water crisis.

Freezing winter storms wreaked havoc on Jackson’s old and crumbling water infrastructure. In mid-February the city experienced over 80 water main breaks, leaving tens of thousands of residents without running water. But while the Texas blackouts dominated the news cycle, Jackson’s water crises received far less attention, even as it extended into its fourth week. Jackson’s residents, 80 percent of whom are Black and nearly 30 percent of whom live below the poverty line, have been forced to boil water to drink, bathe, and use the bathroom. They’ve collected rainwater to flush their toilets and bought bottled water to brush their teeth. In the middle of a pandemic, residents of Jackson haven’t had reliable access to clean water to wash their hands.

This water crisis was years in the making. For the past 50 years the Republican-led state government has been cutting taxes and neglecting to invest in infrastructure repairs. Jackson’s shrinking tax base has been exacerbated by white flight and the fact that, unlike other capital cities, Jackson doesn’t make money off property taxes for state-owned buildings. The city of Jackson has a $300 million budget. According to Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Jackson’s wastewater and drinking water systems require at least $2 billion of repairs. 

“It isn’t a matter of if these systems will fail, it’s a matter of when these systems will fail,” Lumumba tells Nathalie Baptiste on the Mother Jones Podcast. “Pipes were bursting throughout the system because they are over 100 years. They’re like peanut brittle.”

On March 17, the city of Jackson Mississippi finally lifted its boil water notice. But Jackson’s water crisis laid bare the budget, infrastructure, and equity issues that leave cities like Jackson vulnerable to future extreme weather events.

“Climate change is significantly impacting the pressure on our infrastructure. We have hotter summers, colder winters, and more rain in the rainy season,” say’s Mayor Lumumba. “They’re becoming our new normal.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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