10 ms·
Jackson, Mississippi, to go without reliable drinking water indefinitely
- sidewndr46 4y agoFrom 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 4y agoThere's currently no/low water pressure, so supply of even non-drinkable water is difficult.
- sidewndr46 4y agoMy 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 4y agoThere 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.
- LinuxBender 4y agoOver 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.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoA 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.
- LinuxBender 4y agoI might give this a shot. I've used them on wells and they are great for sediment. I wasn't sure if it would work the same with the moss but if it works that would save me from using the tank pellets.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 4y agoIf you have control over where your water supply is within the lake, and you're up for it, I recommend introducing lily pads, cattails, or watercress in the vicinity. Those flora will absorb the nutrients algae requires to grow, inhibiting its growth. Non uniform foreign debris near water intakes is just an overall pain :/
- LinuxBender 4y agoUnfortunately I don't. The lake is in national forest and it also powers a small hydroelectric dam.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoSounds absolutely lovely. Enjoy!
- mikestew 4y agoIt’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 4y agoSounds like a nightmare cluster-duck, a whole city without water!
- numtel 4y agoImagine being in Monterrey, Mexico, a city more than ten times bigger without water.
- stodor89 4y ago2022, USA, 100k+ town with no drinking water. Indefinitely. We've truly peaked as a civilization.
- jgrowl 4y agoEvery 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.
- kurupt213 4y agoindefinitely is a bit extreme. it should say "until pumps are fixed and service is restored"
- bdcravens 4y agoIndefinitely != infinitely. It just means they do not know how long it will take.
- kurupt213 4y agoBut there is a nuance to the message that is disingenuous. Diction and imagery. This isn’t a legal contract, it doesn’t matter if it is ‘technically true.’
- NoSorryCannot 4y agoIt doesn't mean forever but it is widely understood to mean that there is no foreseeable resolution in the near future. I think most of us know to avoid the word unless we're signaling some degree of permanence.
- JohnFen 4y agoIndefinitely doesn't imply permanence to me. I take it as meaning what it means: there is no reasonable prediction for when the situation will be resolved. Which seems correct for this case.
- syntaxing 4y agoShouldn’t the army corp step it at some point? Shouldn’t the military be able to fly in some pumps if really needed?
- Noumenon72 4y 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.
- JohnFen 4y agoThe governor has to request it.
- toss1 4y agoThey'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
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bequanna 4y agoI 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/ https://www.jacksonms.gov/departments/office-of-the-mayor/
- davak 4y agoThe 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-getting-state-help-fund-water-sewer-repairs/ https://www.wlbt.com/2022/02/17/jackson-faces-uphill-battle-...
- bequanna 4y agoSo, instead of an appropriate local bonding ballot initiative (or whatever) to fund this like every other city does, they just throw up their hands and ask for state handouts? Maybe they are worried about the political implications of rising property taxes or water bills? Seems like a HUGE failure by an inept local government.
- ParksNet 4y agoEven 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?
- autoexec 4y agoDoes 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kurupt213 4y agounder 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 4y ago30 minutes for every new filter? Or every time?
- kurupt213 4y agoEvery time. They concentrate the pfas in the water, which bleeds through the cartridge as it sits there between uses, meaning all the diffusion breakthrough has to be flushed every time. These filters only slow down the contamination relative to water flow rate. Think Of them as big chromatography columns or frontal analysis columns
- 4y ago
- ArekDymalski 4y agoWoah, 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife
- lotsofpulp 4y agoMississippi is not in drought. At least not drought of water.
- greenie_beans 4y agoyou'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
- mattbrewsbytes 4y agoIts 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.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoIrrigation 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".
- zikduruqe 4y agoAlso, that water is shipped to other countries in the form of alfalfa. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989
- mattst88 4y agoMeanwhile... 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/2022-04-05/mississippi-governor-signs-states-largest-income-tax-cut https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi/articles...
- etc-hosts 4y agoThis reporter has been writing great informative articles on this for years https://www.mississippifreepress.org/jackson-water-crisis-investigation https://www.mississippifreepress.org/jackson-water-crisis-in...
- theflyingelvis 4y ago
- hahaitsfunny 4y ago