I 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 fligh

I 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.