Jackson, Mississippi, to go without reliable drinking water indefinitely

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/floods-knock-out-drinking-water-supply-jackson-mississippi-2022-08-30/

by makerofspoons • 4 years ago

54 71 4 years ago

sidewndr462• 4 years ago

From the article:

The city and state were both distributing bottled drinking water and non-potable water for toilets

Is there a risk to using untreated water from the river & reservoir to flush your toilets? Why would the city need to distribute toilet water?

pmyteh• 4 years ago

There's currently no/low water pressure, so supply of even non-drinkable water is difficult.

sidewndr462• 4 years ago

My experience with residential toilets is the tank refills often enough with low pressure anyways. I guess they are in really bad shape if they can't even fill peoples toilet tanks.

mech987• 4 years ago

There should be no risk to using untreated water to flush the toilet.

Presumably they are shipping two types of water- potable and non-potable. The non-potable is less difficult to produce and ship.

You can flush a toilet by dumping a bucket of water into the bowl.

LinuxBender3• 4 years ago

Over time, yes. Not so much a risk to humans but a risk to plumbing. As an example I have water risers on my fields that are fed by a lake. The horses also drink from this. Their water trough gets full of algae and moss. All the fittings I use have to be large enough to not get plugged up by the growth. I've tried using filters in the past but they plug up almost instantly.

toomuchtodo3• 4 years ago

A spin down filter solves for this. Manual ones are $50-$65, nice automated self cleaning ones are $175-$250. Great for well water imho to take the load off of disposable sediment filters further down the system. Depending on the make, you can typically swap out the stainless steel screens to change how aggressive your filtering is.

mikestew• 4 years ago

It’s not a risk of contamination, it is that the treatment plant pumps can’t keep the water pressure up right now. Otherwise, river water is hopefully cleaner than what you’re trying to flush. Though in Jackson, MS, I wouldn’t take that as a given.

captaincaveman• 4 years ago

Sounds like a nightmare cluster-duck, a whole city without water!

numtel• 4 years ago

Imagine being in Monterrey, Mexico, a city more than ten times bigger without water.

stodor89• 4 years ago

2022, USA, 100k+ town with no drinking water. Indefinitely. We've truly peaked as a civilization.

jgrowl• 4 years ago

Every civilization starts building a tower.

Those at the bottom bring supplies to the top and maintain it.

Those at the top are tasked with seeing what is coming and making Wise decisions.

Those at the top forget about the needs of the bottom and instead focus only on vertical expansion.

Eventually the summit grows taller than what the base can sustain.

Then the workers at the bottom abandon the base.

The tower left unmaintained, collapses.

kurupt2135• 4 years ago

indefinitely is a bit extreme. it should say "until pumps are fixed and service is restored"

bdcravens• 4 years ago

Indefinitely != infinitely. It just means they do not know how long it will take.

kahrl• 4 years ago

When will the pumps be fixed and service be restored? Oh, an unknown or unstated length of time? There must be a word for that...

listless• 4 years ago

Yeah, it sounds like this is a feud between the governor and the mayor. The mayor is ultimately responsible here and the governor is using charged language. I assume that’s to make the mayor look more derelict. Who knows what’s actually going on here.

greenie_beans6• 4 years ago

they've been on a boil water notice since july

syntaxing• 4 years ago

Shouldn’t the army corp step it at some point? Shouldn’t the military be able to fly in some pumps if really needed?

Noumenon72• 4 years ago

"Should" implies it's their responsibility, making them the National Bureau in Charge of Municipal Water Supply. It would be nice if they could, but they can't do it for everyone.

JohnFen2• 4 years ago

The governor has to request it.

toss1• 4 years ago

They've got no water in one of the largest cities, but those state officials are definitely on top of making sure that those uppity females have no access to reproductive healthcare, and that city is mostly not white people -- they've got their priorities to take care of!

</sarc>

Meanwhile, it looks like some federal intervention, e.g., Army Corp of Engineers is likely needed.

More seriously, this is what we get when politicians chase "culture issues" and don't actually govern, and people care more about revenge on groups they don't like than electing people who will actually govern.

Seriously broken

bequanna5• 4 years ago

I think you’re confusing the responsibilities of states and local municipalities.

It may surprise you to learn that Jackson is actually led by a quite liberal mayor: https://www.jacksonms.gov/departments/office-of-the-mayor/

davak• 4 years ago

The mayor has been begging* for funds from the state for a long time now to fix the problem though. That being said, I'm sure there is lots of local and state mismanagement that would go into causing such an embarrassment.

* https://www.wlbt.com/2022/02/17/jackson-faces-uphill-battle-...

moralestapia• 4 years ago

For @toss1 maybe, for me I was kind of expecting it.

ars4• 4 years ago

Are you seriously saying that people in Jackson are not capable to taking care of themselves? And they need the state to do it for them?

germinalphrase2• 4 years ago

I know nothing about Jackson, but municipalities all around the country are reliant on money flowing federal>state>local, urban>rural, etc.

There can be good reasons to subsidize infrastructure - for example, urban residents help maintain a rural farming community because they desire the agricultural products.

It’s not even clear the entire state of Mississippi is “capable of taking care of themselves” as over 40 percent of their general operating revenue is supplied by the federal government (2017 numbers) which is consistently in the top five states for receiving federal aid.

I’m not an expert, but the defensiveness seems unwarranted.

vineyardmike4• 4 years ago

Mississippi isn’t able to take care of themselves as a whole!

https://mspolicy.org/mississippi-no-longer-the-state-most-re...

ParksNet• 4 years ago

Even regular tap water in many US cities is contaminated with PFAS and other pollutants.

When water does reach a house, only about 5-20% is used for cooking or drinking - the rest for watering plants, showers, toilet flushing, washing.

Is it better to just outfit each home with an under-sink reverse osmosis machine and pipe in raw reservoir water?

kurupt2135• 4 years ago

under sink would be too inconvenient

and all the RO membrane cartridges, or millipore filter cartridges are contaminated with PFAS, anyhow. it's literally everywhere. We have to run ours for 30 minutes before taking the ultra-pure water at the lab to drop the levels down to 'baseline'. Otherwise, the built up levels blow out the instruments.

tophi• 4 years ago

30 minutes for every new filter? Or every time?

gepardi• 4 years ago

Every house could have its own treatment system…

autoexec• 4 years ago

Does anyone have a map of US cities without safe drinking water? I can't keep track at this point. Why isn't the EPA on this? They should have a dashboard or something by now.

ArekDymalski• 4 years ago

Woah, Paolo Bacigalupi wrote "Water knife" only 7 years ago and I thought it depicts a scenario our grandkids will face. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife

lotsofpulp• 4 years ago

Mississippi is not in drought. At least not drought of water.

greenie_beans6• 4 years ago

you're right that this isn't a problem of drought. it's a problem of infrastructure, money, and power. but north mississippi is in a drought. jackson isn't in north mississippi

mattbrewsbytes2• 4 years ago

Its kinda bonkers that golf courses and grass lawns are things allowed to thrive in areas of the US where they are not naturally occurring.

I also think its kinda crazy that humans have brought agriculture to a desert via irrigation and think that's sustainable. This is the type of thing where Federal laws/rulings are needed because there are like 4 states over consuming the water.

AlotOfReading3• 4 years ago

Irrigation agriculture has been a primary source of life in places like Arizona for millennia. Reducing it down to "irrigation is unsustainable" is both incorrect and unproductive. It can be made sustainable, as long as we understand the system and respect appropriate limits within that. It's likely those changes will need to be larger than anyone wants, but they're still possible in a less dramatic way than "everyone is forcibly removed from the area".

zikduruqe2• 4 years ago

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-obsession...

This is a good listen/read.

aaroninsf• 4 years ago

Its future is already becoming reality in the watershed of the over-subscribed Colorado.

2022 is a remarkable year, one of a striking tipping point: in which a large number of climate change cautionary tales moved from speculative to the front page.

As with the rapid evolution of AI txt2image tools, the notable stories, milestones, data points, are coming too quickly to keep up with.

Jackson has its own specific problems, and they aren't drought-specific as others noted ITT;

but the story is nonetheless a useful addition to the growing list of examples of where our institutional and structural response to ecological and climatological challengs is grotesquely inadequate.

As in Kim Stanley Robinson's fantasies, hope seems to lie in something which today seems as unlikely as our current headlines did a few years ago: an intervention of some kind which puts actual decision-making power in the hands of policy makers and scientists who understand what is happening and the scale of response required to ride it out as a civilization.

mattst88• 4 years ago

Meanwhile... the state government passed the largest income tax cut in its history just a few months ago. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi/articles...

etc-hosts• 4 years ago

This reporter has been writing great informative articles on this for years

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/jackson-water-crisis-in...

Jackson, Mississippi, to go without reliable drinking water indefinitely

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