Water, Race, and Local Governance: Why the Jackson Government Should Be in Charge of Water Management
Mississippi National Guard members distribute bottled water to Jackson residents during the September 2022 state of emergency. Photo courtesy of Staff Sgt. Connie Jones, U.S. Army National Guard.
Erupting sewers, frozen water pipes, floods disrupting water treatment facilities, and brown and undrinkable water—Jackson, Mississippi has had its fair share of potable water shortages. But why is all of this happening in Jackson, a city with a population of almost 150,000 people?
The answer lies in the city’s neglected, underdeveloped water infrastructure and historical racial disparities. Despite rising short-term investments and government funding, these strategies are insufficient to address the root cause of Jackson’s water crisis. Instead, control of water management should be allocated to Jackson’s local administration to rebuild the trust of the local community.
August 2022—Water Crisis in Jackson
Although citizens have complained about mismanaged funds and programs for years, Mississippi state politicians have not provided comprehensive or timely responses to improve the city’s water system. After years of continual water crises, the situation in August 2022 brought the intensity of the system’s failures into the limelight. Heavy rainfall caused the Pearl River in Mississippi and Louisiana to overflow into the Ross Barnett Reservoir. The river and reservoir are Jackson’s two largest sources of water. Subsequently, the floods soon overpowered the city’s pump system, and over 153,000 people were left without water to drink, flush their toilets, or even fight fires. At the start of the crisis, Mississippi declared a state of emergency and deployed aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) along with the support of hundreds of volunteers. However, as the months progressed, support for the city’s water situation waned.
The question has since shifted from emergency response to prevention. What can be done to prevent a future water crisis? City officials and Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba agreed with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal (EPA) to adopt a third-party water manager, Ted Henefin, to address the city’s water infrastructure issues. Henefin ambitiously aimed to transform the infrastructure significantly during his year-long tenure. To do so, the EPA agreement granted him significant oversight and federal funds. Since November 2022, Jackson has secured over $800 million in federal money for the purpose of restructuring the water system, and the changes are long overdue. President Joe Biden announced in June 2023 that the first $115 million out of $600 million designated for the repair of Jackson’s water system would come from the massive 2022 omnibus spending bill.
A Racial History
Despite these promising investments, building lasting trust with short-term measures is unrealistic. The root cause of this mistrust is a century-long history of racist water management that has undermined the needs of the local public. With an 83 percent Black population, and with 20 percent of the city living below the poverty line, Jackson is yet another example in the United States of environmental injustice and racially rooted negligence. It is unfortunately no surprise that federal allocations for water services and long-term development programs peaked in the 1970s, after which Jackson experienced an exodus of its white population. Protests against integrating schools and other public facilities led thousands of white Jackson residents to leave the city entirely. As the percentage of the city’s Black citizens increased significantly, average wages and the quality of water infrastructure simultaneously declined. In response to this historic neglect, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed federal complaints with the EPA arguing that Jackson’s water system presents a civil rights violation.
Due to years of neglect, Jackson has experienced far beyond its fair share of water crises. In 2012, the EPA fined the city over $400,000 for thousands of unsanitary sewage leaks into the city’s drinking water. In 2020, record high rainfall disposed sewage directly into the Pearl River, contaminating water distribution systems. In 2021, pipes froze during a cold winter and left tens of thousands of residents without water. Citizens have also grown accustomed to boil notices—periods when tap water cannot be consumed without first boiling away dangerous particles—of which there have been over 300 in the last two years. Since 2021, the EPA has been demanding that Mississippi prioritize its water infrastructure.
State and Local Politics in Conflict
On the backdrop of such a history, Jackson was a sitting duck. It was only time for another large-scale water crisis after years of limited and racist water infrastructure. And state politics should take more accountability for the consequences of their inaction.
Governor Tate Reeves blamed the city government for the water crisis in 2022, but the state has not sufficiently prioritized Jackson and its population for decades. As a result, Mayor Lumumba has expressed frustrations with the state’s historical neglect for and indifference to the demands of Jackson residents. Appropriation bills, including one in early 2022 for $42 million in repairs to the water system, did not advance out of state legislative debates. These funds are especially relevant because some of the pipes in Jackson’s water network predate the Great Depression, and most are around 70 years old. The current average national age for water-carrying infrastructure is 45 years, and the EPA estimates almost $850 million in annual investments are needed to replace and strengthen existing pipes. Because of this, leaks are prominent in Jackson. In March 2023, leaks from one pipe alone contributed to a loss of 5 million gallons of water per day, enough to sustain 50,000 people per day.
Consequently, decisions made at the state level have detrimental effects for Jackson’s efforts to improve its water management because they directly limit the city’s control over resources and proposals. For instance, two bills have recently been proposed in the Mississippi Senate that will directly limit Jackson’s efforts to maintain control over its water resources. The first bill, signed into law in April 2023, requires billing for water resources to be determined solely by its consumption. The second bill, although unsuccessful, aimed to remove Jackson’s power to determine water policy by shifting control to the state.
The debate around the first bill is rooted in a tradition of billing water based on how much of it a household uses. However, in the aftermath of the current water crisis, pipes were still distributing undrinkable water into Jackson homes, with residents still being billed for this unusable water. Furthermore, bills were increasingly irregular, with many residents getting lump bills after months of receiving nothing. As 26.1 percent of Jackson residents live below the federal poverty line according to the latest U.S. Census, many households are burdened with the cost of water bills.
A long-term solution to the issue of unjust billing practices is to eliminate consumption-based water billing and replace it with a tiered, cap-based system. Such programs have been successfully implemented in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Henefin proposed a similar practice in Jackson, whereby homes valued under $160,000 could not be billed more than $150 per month for water services. Although this increases the monthly water bill for residences valued over $160,000, a comprehensive study published in 2023 found that tiered water payment systems would significantly alleviate health detriments, housing insecurity, and high levels of debt for low-income residents.
However, Henefin’s innovative approach to changing the perspective on water commodification never took off. Instead, in April 2023, Republican Governor Reeves signed House Bill 698, which requires local governments to bill water based on consumption. In doing so, Jackson has to continue perpetuating a system that residents do not trust and has pushed thousands into debt.
A second bill, the Mississippi Capitol Region Utility Act, was proposed by Republican legislators in early 2023. If it had passed, it would have shifted water system management from the city to the state. Republican lawmakers, who are in the majority in the state of Mississippi, want to re-delegate control of water resources to the state-level. The bill ultimately failed, but its proposal further exposes the partisan divide between the Republican state legislature and Jackson, a city with a Democratic majority, regarding both governments’ efforts to transform and innovate the city’s water management.
Instead of supporting city policies, providing financial assistance, and promoting multi-city and regional water projects, Mississippi has repeatedly failed Jackson residents—and it continues to do so.
The Limited Scope of Current Approaches
The current water crisis and its solutions are mainly centered around freshwater resources, but other water-related issues must be addressed to ensure a comprehensive overhaul of Jackson’s water system. For starters, reconstructing decades of mistrust in the city’s water source is essential. While Henefin and Mayor Lumumba host town halls to listen to the public and increase their participation in the government process, partisan state politics are continually hindering their efforts. Additionally, the city has historically faced sewage mismanagement, and federal funds targeting freshwater improvement do not include water used for sanitation. Hence, Henefin stated that up to $125 million in funds made available through the Army Corps of Engineers could be allocated for such purposes. Such allocations are yet to be enacted.
Jackson’s problem is not a lack of water. Instead, it is a loss of valuable water because of insufficient infrastructure, significant leaks, and years of mismanagement and under-prioritization.
Water will be, and arguably is already, one of the most valuable resources in the coming decades. With no alternative suitable for human consumption or use in essential industries, water shortages paint a grim picture for the future.
What happened in Jackson last year is not new to the United States, nor is it on track to end in the near future. In 2014, the nation finally opened its eyes to racial water policies in Flint, Michigan. Lethal levels of lead entered municipal water sources, especially affecting predominantly low-income and POC communities. The recommendation to boil water sourced from the city’s tap water supply was only lifted in February 2023.
As water infrastructure in underfunded Black communities is continually neglected across the country, large-scale government inaction is edging toward disaster. As climate change continues to worsen flooding and drought patterns, giving localities more funding and prioritization of water system improvements is not just a matter of public policy but of life and death.
Ada Baser (GS ’24) is a staff writer for CPR studying political science. Her main interests include U.S.-Middle Eastern relations, water governance, and transitional justice.