Water Crisis in Jackson Caused by City Leaders’ Incompetence, Not Lack of Funds: Mississippi Governor

The O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant in Jackson, Miss., on Aug. 31, 2022. Brad Vest/Getty Images

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, has denied allegations by two Democrat members of Congress—Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)—that his administration withheld funds from Jackson, Mississippi, leading to the city’s water crisis.

In a Nov. 7 press release, Reeves highlighted his Oct. 31 response to Thompson and Maloney, countering that Jackson has received all funding requested, and even a disproportionate amount when compared with the other 1,100 water systems in the state.

However, Thompson and Maloney, who launched an investigation into the issue in October, maintain that climate and social justice issues, as well as the city’s disinvestment, must be addressed.

“Scientists have concluded that the rise in coastal sea-levels and frequent flooding in Mississippi—which contributed to the water crisis in Jackson—are a direct result of climate change,” the letter stated (pdf). “The city, the majority of whose residents are Black, has also suffered decades of disinvestment, and the residents report they have not gone more than a month for over two years without a ‘boil water’ notice in effect.”

According to the letter, Mississippi has received more than $10 billion in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including $429 million that was allotted to the state’s water infrastructure.

In April, state lawmakers approved Senate Bill 2822, which established the Mississippi Municipality and County Water Infrastructure Grant Program (MCWI) Act of 2022—administered by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ)—to utilize funds made available through ARPA.

The $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package was signed into law on March 11, 2021, the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.

The purpose was to “rescue” the economy after federal and state government officials locked down the country during the pandemic, leading to the closure of thousands of churches, recovery-support meetings, and small businesses, while big box and liquor stores remained open.

At $435 million, state municipalities requested close to the total of the $450 million the Mississippi Legislature put into the MCWI fund for drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater improvement projects.

“It also emphasizes assistance to economically disadvantaged communities, as well as projects promoting regional development,” MDEQ stated. “These MCWI grant funds, administered by MDEQ, are available as matching funds for local ARPA fiscal recovery funds.”

Allegations of Disinvestment

However, the MCWI’s criteria for allocating funding, such as median household income and possible population decline, will limit the funding Jackson receives, the letter claimed.

Thompson and Maloney estimate that the cost to maintain the city’s water distribution system is nearly $1 billion.

“Under the matching formula Mississippi adopted for the American Rescue Plan Act funds, Jackson would directly receive, at most, $84 million for water projects, assuming the city is able to use its entire allocation for these projects,” they wrote.

The letter alleged that the state has repeatedly limited funding to Jackson by initially planning to bar communities of more than 4,000 people from competing for additional funding for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“After officials from Jackson and other impacted communities raised concerns, the revised funding formula ‘set a limit ($500,000) which a loan recipient may receive in subsidy for one loan,’” the lawmakers wrote. “This arbitrary cap makes it much harder for Jackson to obtain the funding of up to $1 billion needed to address its water system.”

Thompson and Maloney ended by asking for a detailed plan on how the funds will be dispersed by Oct. 31.

Imminent Collapse

“My administration is deeply committed to ensuring that all federal funds received by Mississippi for drinking water system upgrades have been in the past and will continue to be in the future made available and distributed among Mississippi’s more than 1,100 water systems on an objective and race-neutral basis,” Reeves stated in his Nov. 7 press release.

The governor said it was systematic failure on the part of city management that led to Reeves needing to intervene to stabilize the city’s water system.

“In late August, with a nearly month-long boil water alert in place, and the two primary raw water pumps at O.B. Curtis previously removed for repairs and out of commission, the total collapse of the City’s water system was imminent,” Reeves said.

The city’s water system consists of two treatment plants: the O.B Curtis Water Treatment Plant and the J.H. Fewell Water Treatment Plant.

The O.B Curtis plant was constructed in two phases: one around 1992 and the second around 2007.

In August, heavy rain flooded the plant and caused a failure in operations, resulting in a loss of water pressure that left more than 150,000 people without drinking water while the city had already been under a boil-water notice.

“For the past several years, state and federal regulators have been actively involved in enforcement efforts against the city relating to its mismanagement of the water system,” Reeves said in his letter responding to Thompson and Maloney (pdf).

In his press release, he stated that the U.S. Department of Justice, on the behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), issued a letter to the city of Jackson expressing its intention to file an action against the city under the Safe Drinking Water Act, citing the city’s failure to provide basic maintenance such as adequate staffing and compliance with operation standards.

A general view of the O.B. Curtis Water Plant as the city will go without reliable drinking water indefinitely after pumps at the water treatment plant failed, leading to the emergency distribution of bottled water and tanker trucks for 180,000 residents, in Ridgeland, north of Jackson, Miss., on Aug. 31, 2022. Eric Cox/Reuters

MCWI Grants Funds to Jackson

The city of Jackson applied for a $23 million matching grant to help fix its drinking water, which will give it $46 million in total.

For wastewater improvements, it applied for a $12 million match, totaling $24 million.

In September, the Hinds County Board of Supervisors in Jackson approved an allocation of $17 million in American Rescue Plan funds for the city to improve its water infrastructure.

The county received approximately $44 million in direct federal allocation.

On Nov. 4, Mississippi officials approved the city of Jackson’s $35.6 million grant request that will be acquired from the American Rescue Plan to fix its water infrastructure.

Incompetence, Racism, or Climate Change

Some have argued that these issues have been the product of mismanagement, while others, such as mainstream media outlets, have recently blamed both climate change and racism for the city’s water woes.

The Mississippi chapter of the NAACP has alleged that Reeves disinvested funds from Jackson that could have gone to fix the problem.

The NAACP called on the EPA’s recently formed Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights to investigate the matter, stating in its letter to Reeves (pdf) that the organization has "been in keen observance of the long history of Jackson getting less than its fair share of public funding from the Mississippi state budget and at times, being denied of any funding at all when it was deserved.”

The NAACP filed a complaint with the EPA under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, making an official allegation that the water crisis was caused by racial discrimination.

The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation.

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (C) and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) confer with Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba following a tour the City of Jackson's O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Facility in Ridgeland, Miss., on Sept. 2, 2022. Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo

‘Structural Racism’

President Joe Biden pledged millions to combat “structural racism,” which has led to the creation of diversity, equity, and inclusion departments in government agencies.

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba stated in a city press release that “we know that the condition of Jackson’s water system didn’t happen overnight but is due to decades of disinvestment in the city’s infrastructure.”

However, there are many within Jackson who have been watching this play out for years and point to the city government’s own underinvestment in its water infrastructure.

Reeves said in an Oct. 17 press release that throughout the water emergency, “we have had to procure chemicals, workers, and materials for the city routinely because they were incapable of doing so.”

Reeves added that the state has “poured millions of dollars from taxpayers of every county into this effort to rescue the city from a crisis of incompetence.”

On Oct. 20, during a traditional turkey pardoning ceremony to support a campaign designed to raise money for families in need for Thanksgiving, Reeves answered a question from a reporter about the problems with the city’s water system.

“The mayor has gone on national TV and blamed that on a lot of things,” Reeves said, referring to Lumumba. “But what we have proven over the last 52 days is the water struggles in Jackson were specific to the incompetence of [the Lumumba] administration.”

Lumumba’s office didn’t respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment by press time.