During a town hall event, members of the Jackson community shared their concerns with experts, civil rights leaders, and Mississippi’s 2nd District Congressman Bennie Thompson.
The city’s water system has been in a state of crisis for several years, but it has become more stable within recent months according to court-designated monitor Ted Henifin. He says the city hasn’t spent any of the $600 million sent by the federal government.
Henifin says “I think it’s a success story so far. It’s taken a long time to get here, and we’re not going to have it perfect for a while, but frankly, it’s amazingly better today than it was due to a number of things we’ve found over the past two months. Valves closed throughout the system. We’ve opened 41 major valves that were closed.”
Henifin says the federal funding will primarily be used in replacing miles of small-diameter pipes that bottleneck a large portion of the city’s water system.
In the past, the federal government has provided the state legislature with funds to aid Jackson’s water infrastructure. But Derrick Johnson, National President of the NAACP and resident of Jackson, says lawmakers often diverted those funds away from the capital city.
Johnson says “Over 25 years, the state of Mississippi received funds under the Clean Water Act. Only 3 of those 25 years did they allocate funds for the oldest water infrastructure in the state, that’s the City of Jakson’s infrastructure. The response that we’ve heard is that ‘Well Jackson only applied for the money 3 years,’ but when you write the criteria where you automatically preclude the city from qualifying, why should the city waste their time?”
Many residents also shared frustrations during the gathering about the city’s trouble securing a garbage disposal contract.
