11 ms·
In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale
- arealaccount 4y ago$200 bucks a month on bottled water you may as well drink beer /s
- effnorwood 4y ago
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago"Gift article" link without paywall: https://wapo.st/3KMLjMB https://wapo.st/3KMLjMB
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Bilal_io 4y agoHere is a "gift article" from NYT. Not sure why they don't shorten links. Mississippi Crisis Highlights Climate Threat to Drinking Water Nationwide https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/mississippi-water-climate-change.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhkQVUbAibIRp8irwadhOPUwaQkhzrhJTSYU3NJy-UQCpSNvkzNbKxsap0zwzGfDpdnAYMYecZTnKVZLlA_DE6huIeFk5AIZH9q94zuVzprms-XB7l9rDW2MSyzd7Z1geW0707ZYWLpUKWP1GYzZ1ow-esTflmp2HIDwKzOEvckmYUtmKd8We0pAGsIdyKIvPL3ChVhOd_gbRjU6gM-WegxSiiE1JfHqOpGKFMOfAqAGHBv4m8868deMMcUOsv_Lh0jesn_gdYBGyhNOwojibYkA3QXTLeoQnI https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/mississippi-water-clim...
- cs702 4y agoBy all measures, this is due to the kind of neglect and mismanagement one would expect to see in an underdeveloped or war-torn country, not in a city inside a state that is part of the most powerful country on earth. And Jackson is the state's largest city and as well as its capital! It must be so embarrassing for the politicians who have been running Mississippi. They've done a truly terrible, horrible job on this.
- RhodesianHunter 4y agoYou would think that, but history tells us that in Mississippi nothing will change.
- 11235813213455 4y agoexcept climate
- School-Cotton 4y ago> not in a city inside a state that is part of the most powerful country on earth Why not? There are plenty of ecological catastrophes in China and were in the Soviet Union when it existed. I suspect “powerful” isn’t exactly the variable you’re trying to describe, and you actually mean something like “most developed”. But stories like this prove that the US indeed isn’t the most developed country in the world.
- InCityDreams 4y agoThe Richest Third World Country In The World?
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoWhenever there is a heavy rain in one of China's cities (e.g. Beijing or Wuhan), the whole city simply floods...like up to your head. It took a country like Japan to dig huge drainage tunnels to figure out how to avoid that problem in that region (so I would conclude, Japan is the most powerful country if judged solely by infrastructure quality).
- hollywood_court 4y agoUs Southerners love to shoot ourselves in the foot. We do it every single election cycle and then make disparaging remarks about states like California.
- nradov 4y agoCalifornia does certain things better, but we also manage to burn down half the state every summer. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-wildfires-grow-overnight-evacuations-ordered/ar-AA11r3ys https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-wildfires-grow-... Today we're in the middle of a power shortage, to the extent that EV owners are asked not to charge their cars. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/california-electric-vehicle-charging-flex-alert/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/california-electric-vehic... Some small towns have literally run out of water. https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2021/06/california-water-drought-shortage-crisis-well-failure-teviston/ https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2021/06/california-... I'm not trying to excuse the negligent mismanagement of Jackson's public water system, just pointing out that there are serious infrastructure problems nationwide. The bill is coming due.
- burlesona 4y agoIt's not just Jackson, or the state of Mississippi. The US has overbuilt infrastructure since WW2. All of it was built on the assumption that infrastructure investment always leads to a massive expansion of the tax base and easily pays for itself, when in reality more and more of our investments have had a negative ROI. This is going to be the new normal for the US as many cities have continues to expand outward for decades, incurring ever greater maintenance liability, without accompanying economic growth to support the maintenance burden. You've seen a lot of Strong Towns posts on HN, this is the issue that ST was founded on and the focus of it's advocacy. The best short explainer is here: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0 https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0 You can read a lot more about maintenance here if you're interested: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/Maintenance https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/Maintenance
- stainforth 4y agoSometime in the 70s there was a reduction of federal funding and thus an expectation that the state could shoulder the costs of infrastructure. Combined with white flight that took potential tax base elsewhere, it became very difficult to support maintenance at this level. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/11498/under-the-surface-part-3-a-legacy-in-decline https://www.mississippifreepress.org/11498/under-the-surface...
- smileysteve 4y agoThe most important part about white flight is that each of these suburbs went to create even less sustainable infrastructure (via increased points of service and decreased population that is the single family home).
- scifibestfi 4y agoDoes anyone else feel like all of our institutions are crumbling in real time? And to the degree they still work is a product of momentum?
- s3r3nity 4y agoAlong with the raiding of coffers, because everyone feels like "I need to get mine." Overly generous tax breaks, bailouts, "cancelling debt," etc. etc.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- peterpost2 4y agoThat was the most shocking thing to me when I visited the United States for the first time in my live last month, the road system is so incredibly poorly maintained and so incredibly poorly thought out. It all is incredibly expansive but not maintained. That being said I only saw 3 (eastern) states, maybe it's different elsewhere.
- nostrademons 4y agoIt all depends how many rich people live in the city. You can tell when you cross city/town borders because the roads become noticeably better or worse.
- yibg 4y agoI think the road systems are pretty badly designed pretty much everywhere. Cross walks that cross 3 lanes (each side)with traffic going 40mph and no signal. Stop signs that doesn't tell you if the intersecting direction stops or not. Half-assed painted gutters for bike lanes. Places with 4 signs to indicate when you can park, each with different (sometimes overlapping) times and conditions. the list goes on.
- Bud 4y ago
- the_optimist 4y agoIt’s well on the way to being fixed already. https://www.wjtv.com/news/jacksons-water-crisis/more-improvements-seen-at-plant-as-jackson-water-crisis-continues/ https://www.wjtv.com/news/jacksons-water-crisis/more-improve...
- boeingUH60 4y agoWhere I reside..what you’ll call a third-world country (Nigeria), everyone who builds a home digs their personal water borehole and sewage system because our government is too incompetent to maintain city-wide infrastructure. I’ve always thought it would be much better if we can get centralized systems for these things as they do in developed countries, but I’m pretty sure this is the type of thing we would see regularly due to government incompetence and carelessness. Needless to say, I didn’t expect this kind of situation from the US, a country with many characteristics I admire…come on, you guys are too rich for this to happen!
- sharkweek 4y agoYou’d be surprised how much the quality of infrastructure can vary between cities and states across the United States.
- spaniard89277 4y agoPublic infrastructure needs quite a lot of work to make it work and care about it. You need a constant stream of engineers, technicians, materials, money, etc. And quite a lot of coordination. So even a first world country can fuck it all up and you wouldn't need a spectacular failure, just a bit of time, and a bit of willingness/resources shortage too. You can build a more, say, resilient infrastructure, but I don't think anyone builds infrastructure like The Romans did today.
- koheripbal 4y agoPart of the problem is that engineers have all moved out of these cities.
- hosh 4y agoHaving better local sources of water and treatment may turn out to he a better idea than centralized water treatment. Here in the US, water is pumped (often uphill) and purified to drinking water standards, only for 70% of residential water used for watering green lawns. Those lawns are usually grown in a way where soil microbes are killed off, water retention capability are reduced (so it needs more water), and the lawn is excessively cut and fertilized in order preserve an aesthetic. Being able to waste land and water resources like that is a typical signal of wealth. Personally for me, signaling wealth by wasting resources is not a characteristic that is admirable for me. Better water management can include multiple rounds of circulating greywater to support food-bearing perennials, and on-site or perhaps, neighborhood level treatment of water. So it may turn out that, if you look beyond the modern West as if it is the pinnacle of civilization, you can skip the mistakes and develop something better for your country and your local community. EDIT: this 10 min video shows the basic principles for onsite greywater and blackwater harvesting: https://youtu.be/f-sRcVkZ9yg https://youtu.be/f-sRcVkZ9yg
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- rendall 4y agoThe government(s) in the US have reneged on their social contract to care for its citizens. It's a crime.
- krapp 4y agoAnd here I thought the social contract in the US was "the government which governs least, governs best."
- didgetmaster 4y agoIt really just boils down to priorities. Politicians at all levels (local, state, federal) seem to always have money available for their personal pet projects but can't seem to find money for basic necessities like water, roads, safety, etc.. I lived a couple years in a small town just outside of Jackson. Going into the city never felt safe. You had to even look over your shoulder while golfing at the local course while wondering when you might get mugged.
- surge_drink 4y agoMaybe they can use some of that Ukraine money.
- vnchr 4y agoI don’t know if the $13.5 Billion committed by the US for security assistance in Ukraine would make any difference in the well being of US citizens with targeted infrastructure improvements or expanded social services.
- nostromo 4y agoJackson is in a death spiral. It’s been shrinking for decades and the people who leave first are the people with income, money, and opportunity. The people left are increasingly poor, on public assistance, and simply don’t pay enough in taxes to maintain their city’s infrastructure. When this happens, cities need to restructure. Shrink the city boundaries and end service to people outside of it. Give them plenty of warning of course - years of warning - but a city that is shrinking in population and wealth also needs to physically shrink and reduce the amount of infrastructure being maintained to be solvent.
- Bud 4y agoI get your general argument, and in a lot of circumstances, it has validity, but I don't think it does in this case. Jackson has indeed experienced white flight and a population decline. But it still has basically the same population it had 10 years ago (153k now, 173k as of the 2010 census). And the water treatment infrastructure issues there have been ongoing for many years. There have been repeated appeals to the state for funding. The state has denied anything close to the requested funding. In this particular case, it's not about failing to wisely "physically shrink" the "amount of infrastructure" to something 10% smaller. It's about failure to address chronically broken fundamental infrastructure.
- gigatexal 4y agoWe've been here before. Not that this makes what is happening in Mississippi any easier but Flint has had it bad for years. US infrastructure is falling apart and has been for years.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoFor those turning this into a race issue, the United States has a large number of black controlled cities who have no problem keeping their water systems running. This isn't about race, it's about the particular leaders in Jackson not making the water system a priority. Every other excuse made here applies to other towns who have no problems keeping their water running and clean. Maybe you should ask yourself why you're so desperate to make this about race instead about less than a dozen leaders in one particular city.
- Bud 4y ago"Turning this into" a race issue? It is a race issue. You're simply making things up about Jackson's leaders and hoping they will stick. Well, they don't stick. Jackson has repeatedly appealed for funding to address this issue and they have been repeatedly denied that funding by the state's Republican leaders. Maybe you should ask yourself why you're so lazy that you're unwilling to research the issue, and also so willing to post a knee-jerk reaction in public about how this can't possibly be about race.
- systemvoltage 4y agoDo we have a concrete proof besides suspecting malicious motives and quickly jumping to conclusions about racial discrimination? I am seeing a lot of knee-jerk reaction from our media. Everything is about race. All the fricking time. It is a "systemic" problem that gets blamed at some ulterior level that cannot be proven or challenged. And btw, if you question it, you're a bigot. This is a great way to make zero progress because we've given up the cause to a nation wide racial discrimination problem and therefore, we must not look at incompetency in local government for instance in this case. I guess my problem is how do we know if it is a race problem or not? Surely not every conflict between two races is from racism. US has been a melting pot for many decades and lot of people coexist fine from various cultures.
- dehrmann 4y ago> Jackson has repeatedly appealed for funding to address this issue and they have been repeatedly denied that funding by the state's Republican leader I'm not sure if cities in Mississippi normally get state funding to maintain municipal water systems, but regardless, if the state isn't providing funding, the next option is securing local funding.
- moffkalast 4y ago> a water crisis of unparalleled scale Unparalleled, really? Googling "China" and "heat wave" should give you pretty paralleled results.
- mercy_dude 4y agoI guess Washington Post forgot to fact-check Jackson Mississippi has been always run by corrupt democrats at federal, state and local level. They are poster child fan boy of Benny Thompson who is the longest running Congressman at the moment.
- idlewords 4y agoIt says in the article that the city is run by Democrats, and the state has been run by Republicans for the past 19 years.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> Jackson Mississippi has been always run by corrupt democrats at [...] state [...] level. In the past 30 years they've had a Democratic governor for only four years, from 2000-2004.
- surfpel 4y agoI see lots of comments claiming it is or is not 'about race' or 'red vs blue'. Does anyone have any sources at all to back up either of those claims?
- selimthegrim 4y agoThis article claims New Orleans might be next - https://www.wsj.com/articles/jackson-water-crisis-aging-infrastructure-11662132216 https://www.wsj.com/articles/jackson-water-crisis-aging-infr...
- ALittleLight 4y agoThe story quotes a few people who mention how nobody will take responsibility for this. It's the governor, or the mayor, or the city government, or state government - etc. I wish the reporter would actually take a position on this. Whose fault is this and how do you know?