The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, is far from over and experts, activists and residents blame environmental racism for it happening in the first place.
Other residents told The Associated Press on Friday that their water remains too discolored to count on, so now they’ll have to rely on water distribution by community-run charities or buy water again themselves, adding insult to injury.
Jackson’s population has declined since 1980, a decade after the city’s schools began integrating. Many white families left for the suburbs, leaving less revenue to maintain the infrastructure. Middle class Black people then moved out to escape urban decay and rising crime. State and federal spending never made up the difference.
And when it comes to water scarcity and contamination, they say working-class communities of color are most vulnerable. Jackson’s population is more than 80% Black and the poverty level is 24.5%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Majority-Black Flint, Michigan, has struggled to remove lead from its water since 2014.
Brown is a member of the Mississippi Students Water Crisis Advocacy Team, a group of about 30 students delivering water to residents who are disabled, elderly or don’t have vehicles. That’s what relief has looked like in Jackson — the people most affected doing what they can to help each other. But the limited handouts each day haven’t been enough, forcing people to buy water in stores.
Reeves, a Republican, has not said how much Mississippi should spend on solving this problem. The legislature directed $400 million of federal pandemic relief funds toward water infrastructure upgrades around the state, but it’s unclear how much Jackson will receive because cities are still applying for money. “We cannot perfectly predict what may go wrong with such a broken system in the future,” Reeves said Thursday.
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