Today, Explained - The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

What’s happening in Jackson is hardly unique: Cities and states across the US are setting themselves up for failure by postponing expensive but critical work on aging water infrastructure. Climate change is making things worse, faster. This episode was produced by Jillian Weinberger and Amanda Lewellyn with help from Victoria Chamberlin and Victoria Dominguez, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Serena Solin, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Jackson, Mississippi, here's the past month summed up. It's like playing Russian roulette, that you don't know if you're going to wake up with water. You don't know if you've got water. You don't know what condition the water is in. Now, in response to the chaos, the city's website has been updating residents. Yesterday, the most recent update, the water pressure is back, but the tap water is still not safe to drink unless it is boiled first. It's a horrible situation in the entire city of Jackson, you know, not just one individual. And I blame the city council, the governor and the mayor because they're all in confusion and no one seemed to know how to solve the problem.

Coming up on Today explained how Jackson, Mississippi became ground zero, for today anyway, of our national infrastructure crisis. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk,

an authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Colby Vance, reporter with Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Let's go back to the beginning. How did this all start? Back about two weeks ago, we saw a lot of rain come through the southeastern United States.

And here in Mississippi, a lot of that flooded into the Pearl River upstream. The governor of Mississippi is now declaring a state of emergency after days of heavy rainfall in the central part of the state. The Jackson area saw a lot of flooding and with that flooding came a lot of extra chemicals in the water into Jackson's water plant. That meant they had to also raise the amount of treatment processes they were doing on those highly contaminated waters. The city of Jackson has a very limited staff. They have been understaffed at this water treatment plant for years and years now. The EPA has made it clear that a staffing shortage is amplifying the city of Jackson's continued water issues. And their equipment is exceptionally outdated. And so because of those factors, they just couldn't meet the demands of taking in water, processing it, and then putting it out into the system to maintain that pressure.

So they had to decrease their water production in the short term, which couldn't keep up with the demand that Jackson residents needed. When that happened, we saw water pressure across the city drop as the storage tanks that are used began to drain. At her Fondren home, water pressure is still too low to take a shower or wash clothes, but Hall says she tried to fill up her tub to have water to flush her toilet and wash dishes with. If a city's water pressure is not adequate, the water sits in the pipes at a lower rate and it can't flow as fast. You might've heard the phrase,

moss can't grow on a rolling stone. Well, it kind of applies to whenever water can't flow quickly enough to get to the storage tanks or it sits stagnant in some pipes, then bacteria has a chance to produce faster and faster. And when that happens, it can be dangerous for residents to drink the water. And the city of Jackson has been plagued by that for years. It came out of the faucet and it was thick and it was a different color.

I couldn't even give it to my dog. And that's something that Jacksonians have just come to live with. It's just that in this case, we've seen a bigger problem, which is they don't have water pressure at all. Why has this been going on for so long? This is the capital city. Jackson obviously has a history of racism. So that leads into something called white flight. When a lot of African-Americans moved into the city of Jackson, we began to see a lot of white people that held a majority of the capital. They left the city. Federally mandated school desegregation had prompted waves of white residents to abandon the city.

Between 1970 and 1990, Jackson went from being 60 percent white to being nearly 60 percent black. They didn't move far away. These people are just on the very edge of the county lines. So these people can still benefit from having the things that are in Jackson, but they don't live there themselves. And their personal interest in the city has waned over time. Many look at the city as a stain on the state rather than something that they're proud of as a state capital. And so over a period of time, the city of Jackson lost their tax base. When that happens, they can't keep doing the same infrastructure updates that they had been doing in the past. So over a period of decades, the city has failed to be able to produce adequate maintenance on their systems.

They haven't been able to replace pipes in their grounds across the city. And so these infrastructure failings are something that have compounded over years and years. Who has been most directly affected by this? This is something that is heavily affecting those who live in South and West Jackson. Those residents live miles away from the water treatment plants. And so there is so much distance that has to be covered. They are almost always under a boil water notice. And oftentimes it's easier to count the weeks that they're not on a boil notice than they are. Somewhere, somebody has dropped the ball. And so the city council or the mayor or whoever, the governor, whatever,

needs to get together and get this done. The demographics of Jackson is 80% Black. And a lot of Jackson residents are also low income. And with that, it becomes a system that is increasingly putting a large tax burden on not just African-Americans, but people who have very low incomes and live far below the poverty rate. The city knows it's in the middle of a crisis. The state knows it's in the middle of the crisis. Are those two entities, who presumably should have some of the same goals in mind, are they working together at this point? How are they responding?

It has become a tricky situation to know how they're working together or not. During the first full week of the crisis, the governor and the mayor came together in a press conference talking about how they wanted unity in this going forward to make sure that they were focusing on helping Jackson residents first. There will be plenty of time in the future to play the blame game and y'all can do all of that you want to do. You can do it in real time if you want to, but I ain't got time for it. But then we saw the governor come forward and immediately start blaming city administration for not maintaining the city's water plant adequately. And then on the city side,

they're saying that they have been putting forward plans constantly for the past several years, which never get the funding they need. I've been saying that it's not a matter of if our system would fail, but when our system would fail. Is the city providing people with water or with other types of aid? The city has been providing people with water for a while now. It's something that they've been doing under an EPA order at fire stations across the area. And now the state has also stepped in to help with this issue from our Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and our state National Guard, as well as partners at, for instance, our Department of Agriculture and Commerce. And so with all of these entities coming together, they have been able to drastically step up water distribution efforts. I think the governor mentioned the other day it was surpassing

five million bottles of water passed out within a week. And so with all of that, people are getting the water they need right now. But this is something that has been an issue for so long that people have just gotten used to buying their own water in grocery stores. Some people spend maybe twenty five dollars a week if they live alone. But I've heard families spend maybe like $100 per week just on water for their children. People are fed up. I honestly don't even want to bathe my baby in Jackson's water. It's sad.

And I can't even afford to move out of Jackson, so I have to stay here and deal with this. If I had been living like this for years and I knew that it was in part because the state wouldn't help me, I'd be furious. Have you talked to anybody who's angry? People are pissed. I think it's fair to say this is something that they have to a degree come to live with, come to learn how to live with, but they are not happy about it. Some people are questioning if they want to pay their water bills. Why would you want to pay your water bill if you can't drink the water? And sometimes you don't have water coming out of your taps. It becomes a very regressive cycle. And so people are just really heavily frustrated.

They are appreciative of all the work that's being done to try to get the water pressure back online and get that drinkable again. They're appreciative of the state stepping in and the federal government at this point. And they're appreciative of the national conversation that's ongoing now about Jackson. But it's just a matter of time until this happens again. Unless something drastic happens and a lot of the systems are updated, more workers are added in Jackson, and residents are ensured that they're going to have water in their homes for a longer period of time. Where do things stand today with water? Currently, residents in Jackson do have water pressure. It is tentative because the systems are still very fragile, but they do have water. They cannot drink it. Under the guidance of the Department of Health in Mississippi, they were lowering their standards of water output so they could just meet the pressure demands of the city, now they are currently working towards making sure that water is drinkable.

And so currently residents are advised to not drink the water, not even brush their teeth with the water, although they can technically boil it if they need water to drink in their homes. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Thank you. to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame.

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And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. I have described Jackson as the poster child of the infrastructure challenges that we see in this country. It's Today Explained. Darren Olson is a water resources engineer based in Illinois. He is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, where he vice chairs a committee that grades U.S. infrastructure like a report card. Now, the last one was released in 2021. Out of 17 categories, the U.S. got 11 Ds, 4 Cs, 2 Bs. All of that adds up to 17, so no As.

Our national average? We got an overall grade of C-, not something that you would want to bring home to your parents or you'd want your child to bring home to you. Can I ask what went through your head when you started reading about the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi? Well, while it made frontline news these past few weeks, it's really not all that surprising that something like that can happen. They're dealing with a horrible crisis down in Jackson,

where nearly 150,000 people, as of a few days ago, were still without water. But throughout the country, there is a water crisis. And even here in Illinois, we've got a community, Dixmoor, that as of today is out of water as well. They have to get bottled water because they've had too many water main breaks and they aren't able to deliver water to their residents. So while it's making frontline news right now, it's really not all that surprising. Were the mechanics of what happened in Jackson immediately understandable to you? Was it something where you said, oh dear, this is very confusing, or something where you said, oh dear, this again?

You know, a little combination of both, and I think that's what we're going to start seeing is that there is definitely a water infrastructure problem in the United States. Thousands of New Jersey residents are stocking up on bottled water after tests indicated water filters may not be protecting residents against elevated levels of lead. WSSC tells us there have been 365 water main breaks in our area this month alone. An alarming new report says more than 900,000 Californians do not have access to clean drinking water. More than 65 percent of the failing water systems are located in low-income communities, mostly in the Central Valley. We have aging pipes and we have aging treatment plants that are beyond their useful life.

Here in Chicago, for a while, we're replacing water mains that were literally made of wood. We are replacing water mains that were installed when President Roosevelt was in office. That's Theodore Roosevelt. They were over 100 years old and way beyond their useful life. Served us well, those trees did. That's one part of the problem, and that's the part of the problem I think we understand a little bit more. But the part that's a little bit new is this climate change aspect to it. And so we've got this kind of a double whammy situation where we have aging water infrastructure

that is now up against more severe storms, more drastic droughts. So that is the new part that I think is compounding the existing infrastructure crisis that we have. Why does climate change and the flooding that accompanies it, why does that matter? A pipe is meant to carry water. Why does it matter if it's carrying more water or less water? I always relate water to something that's more, even more understandable to people, which is traffic, right? And so you can envision, you know, if roads that were built 50, 60, even 100 years ago, they were meant to carry a certain type of vehicle and a certain amount of vehicles. Those roads need to get increased both in lanes and in length. When we start talking about how many people are driving in the United States right now,

water is a similar situation. With the roads, if you don't make them wider with more lanes, you obviously have horrific traffic issues. With water, it's the same thing. The pipes that were built 100 years ago and installed 100 years ago, they were meant for a certain type of climate that we were seeing then and were based on the standards of that time. Both of those have changed dramatically.

The pipes that we put in the ground 50 years ago are simply not meant to handle what we're experiencing now. And not to mention the fact that they all have a lifespan, just like every piece of infrastructure has a certain lifespan to it. And we are now exceeding the lifespan of much of the water infrastructure that is underground. How much water infrastructure is there in the U.S.? So in the United States, they estimate that there's about 2.2 million miles of water main. It is generally, when you start talking about how much of this you can replace in a given year. In 2020, it's estimated that about 12,000 miles of pipe were replaced. So that's less than 1% of the total amount of pipe that's in the ground that was able to be replaced in 2020. So you think about how many years it's going to take for us to

upgrade all of this water infrastructure. It's really significant. Why are we not handling it now? Is it that the money doesn't exist? Yes. You know, it is really, it's expensive to replace this infrastructure. And, you know, this water infrastructure is a little bit different than roads and bridges in that, you know, way back when, when this water infrastructure was put

in place, much of it was federally funded back in the 60s, 70s with the Clean Water Act. There was a huge federal boost of money that was put in to try to achieve the goals of the Clean Water Act. Since then, the funding responsibility has shifted dramatically. So it has shifted from the federal side to really the local side. And when you talk about cities like Jackson, that water infrastructure that's in place, that is their responsibility to fix. And the funding generally has to come from the municipality. And they can certainly get loans and there's ways to try to finance that. But to replace that infrastructure that was originally put in, it's on them and it's under roads. And you can imagine how expensive it is to tear up the surface of the road, dig down five, six, sometimes 10 feet down,

pull out this large pipe out of the ground that's in deteriorating condition, put a new one back in, put all that material back, put those other utilities back, and then repave the road. When you explain it like that, I mean, just to do it for a block seems exhausting. And think about doing it for 2.2 million miles of pipe. And so this is something that when the state joined me and shared that they would be bringing in resources, bringing in a team to support us, we welcomed that with open arms because we've been saying that we needed the support. We've been saying that we need resources. So Darren, all of this comes down to what? What it comes down to is a lack of prioritization and a lack of funding to keep up this infrastructure. This is due to decades, decades and decades of possibly 30 years or more of deferred maintenance, a lack of capital improvements made to the system, a lack of a

human capital or workforce plan that accounted for the challenges that our water treatment facility suffers from. This infrastructure is very valuable and And for so many years, we have not prioritized maintaining those to the point now where we're looking at over the next 10 years needing $2.6 trillion to get us from where we're at now, which is a C minus as an overall grade for infrastructure, up to a B. Are we as a nation taking money away from infrastructure, from roads and bridges and aviation and water, and diverting it toward other stuff? Well, certainly there's a fixed pool of resources, and there are certainly many, many needs. I think what we're trying to do is,

and one of the things that has occurred recently with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is to try to let our elected officials know, and they got the message and, you know, they pass at $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure that actually brought in, you know, $550 billion of new spending. It's a once-in-a-generation investment in America, unlike anything we've seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. It's not going to solve our infrastructure problem, and it's a fraction of what we need, but it is really a movement in the right direction. But it's a fraction of what we need? It is a fraction of what we need. That's how big that infrastructure gap is. That is a fraction of what we need. And we have an opportunity, whether it's the engineers or our elected officials, we can start to plan better for

things like climate change and to make sure that whether it's our electric grid or our water mains or our levees or our ports, that they are built more resilient. And finally, we can use things like technology to track these 2.2 million miles of water main. We're able to start to understand where our weak points are, for, you know, the need of the population, where to invest our dollars first and where we're going to get the highest return on that investment. with the mediocre slash disastrous grades. Do you have nightmares about flooding or do you envision flooding being like a minor consequence of where we stand right now? Well, I'm a water resources engineer, so I have nightmares about flooding all the time.

But you know what? That is one part of the consequence. We will see more things like Jackson, Mississippi. We're going to see more headlines out West with whole towns or states running out of water. But there's also the economic side of it as well. Every year, this is costing the American households over $3,000 in hidden costs for our poor infrastructure, whether that is having to fix tires because the roads are in such poor condition that you blew a tire, having to buy bottled water. Maybe it's the electric grid went down and so your refrigerator shut down

and you have to buy new food. These are real costs for the American people. And it's also costing businesses as well. And we don't want to have to wait for a bridge collapse or a whole city needing to boil its water for the focus of our elected officials to be on maintaining our infrastructure and investing in our infrastructure. And too many times, especially with the water system, whether it's a sanitary pipe or a drinking water pipe, it's out of sight and out of mind for 99% of our population. It then becomes difficult to try to convince people

that they need to invest in that when they're not seeing it every day. Today's show was produced by Jillian Weinberger and Amanda Llewellyn with assists from Victoria Chamberlain and Tori Dominguez. It was edited by Matthew Collette. It was fact-checked by Serena Solis. And it was engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.