16 ms·

Jackson’s water crisis: latest updates

170 points by tomohawk 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago
According to the article the Corps arrived 10 days ago and the boil water notice is still in effect, so the only factual part of the editorialized headline appears to be "Jackson, MS". Anyway, you'd expect the federal government to be able to repair a water treatment facility in a tiny city within a few days.
- notart666 4y ago
  I mean not really. You're expecting them to change infrastructure that's failed in a few days when the time involved in manual labor alone would take more than just a few days without even assessing the situation on why it failed and what's the best way to fix the solution.
  - timcavel 4y ago
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    This stuff isn’t super complicated, but it needs to be funded. My spouse was in a leadership position in a municipal water utility for several years. You have to make capital investments to maintain pumps, filtration systems and have operational funds to perform testing and repairs. Municipal government often struggles with capital investment, especially in states that tightly regulate the ability of cities to bond or wherever the governor has the ability to control municipal authorities. There’s a “starve the beast” philosophy in some quarters that creates issues like this. Money is usually the root cause. Incompetence is usually the result. Another common dumb move is selling the water system to a private entity. Because governments are both more efficient and have a lower cost structure for raising capital, in the long run that leads to higher utility rates and deferred investment.
    - Bloating 4y ago
      $ fixes everything
    - briandear 4y ago
      It is funded. But the corrupt government of Jackson squandered it. https://www.wapt.com/amp/article/jackson-mayor-accuses-city-council-members-of-taking-bribes/39265863 https://www.wapt.com/amp/article/jackson-mayor-accuses-city-... Chattanooga, TN has a similar size and no water crisis. As does dozens of other similarly sized towns. Other towns in Mississippi also don’t have the issue. Water is entirely a municipal responsibility and Jackson is a horribly run city. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/26791/no-efforts-to-recruit-epa-says-jackson-failed-to-address-water-system-needs https://www.mississippifreepress.org/26791/no-efforts-to-rec...
      - cma 4y ago
        The first article is about trash collection. It might show accusations of corruption, but otherwise doesn't seem related to water. The second article never alleges corruption. It does say Governor Reeves "[never spoke] to the mayor directly about the ongoing crisis." I'm not sure if the whole crisis is about the number of water operators, which it focuses on.
    - briandear 4y ago
      Governments aren’t more efficient and don’t have a lower cost structure. Anyone that believes otherwise has never been involved with government projects.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    I think they are just expecting the title of the post to be accurate. If the issue cannot be resolved in 24 hours the post should not say it was resolved in 24 hours.
- elicash 4y ago
  > Anyway, you'd expect the federal government to be able to repair a water treatment facility in a tiny city within a few days. Sounds like a short timeframe to me?
  - Bloating 4y ago
    hum... yea of much faith
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Almost the entire job of the military is to move materiel around the world and install it in a matter of days.
- Izkata 4y ago
  Sounds like both are true: The problems have been fixed already, but the notice is still in effect because they need to flush out the distribution pipes and that just takes time.
- wcarss 4y ago
  (disclaimer: I'm not a resident or any kind of expert, but I did read the article down to ~August 30th.) The "crisis" referred to appears to mean the recent loss of pressure throughout the system, which happened after the boil water advisory, active since July 29th. The boil water advisory should be considered a crisis of its own, I agree, but the loss of pressure meant many could not get even basic washing and toilet use done, which made international news. The article is written in a difficult to follow reverse chronological format, but it is clear from its contents that ~24 hours after the arrival of the Corps (at a time when other services were already working on the problem and had likely made big progress), pressure in the system was increased to about 86 psi and nearly the entire system had water supply again: the immediate, primary, news-worthy crisis was then resolved, and has since stayed resolved. Beyond that, work has been done to achieve the higher target pressure desired (also done), get production up and clean out contaminated tanks and beds (mostly done), and to set things up for the full test needed to remove the advisory (not yet done, but anticipated to be soon). The headline is a strange fact to pick out in all this, but it does seem to be essentially true.
  - ars 4y ago
    It's not a strange fact, it's another way of saying that the leadership of Jackson is so incompetent that they can't even fix something that takes just 24 hours to repair once competent people arrive onsite. From you news you might imagine they had some huge disaster that would take weeks to fix, but actually it's pure incompetence.
    - andirk 4y ago
      A serious water crisis like this can be attributed to lack of funds, a series of unfortunate events, and/or incompetence. Flint was incompetence but more like intentional criminal acts. If the Corps fixed the Jackson issues in a day or two, then those state/local officials are not fit for their jobs. Right? What am I missing?
    - throwayyy479087 4y ago
      No it’s racism by the water treatment plant designers
- cbozeman 4y ago
  Jackson is 1/3rd the size of New York City (114 sq. mi. vs 302 sq. mi.). You're mistaking the tiny population of 150,000 or so as a proxy for it's size.
- dang 4y ago
  Ok, we've reverted the title. Submitted title was "Jackson MS water crisis resolved within 24 hours of Corps of Engr on site". Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dpeck 4y ago
There seems to be a lot of misinformation going on with Jackson’s water situation. It’s disconcerting to see this level of “fog of war” happening in a state capital. I’ve seen everything from completely irreparable forever to already fixed being reported within days of each other.
- tjr225 4y ago
  Don’t trust anything you read on the internet.
  - scrame 4y ago
    Does that include this comment?
    - macksd 4y ago
      It would even include any answers to that question.
      - vidanay 4y ago
        I don't believe it.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - tjr225 4y ago
      Use your best judgment. I know I will.
- tenpies 4y ago
  This is one of those comical cases where the State and its complicit media has proven to be so utterly untrustworthy that I put more trust on social media reports from people living there. Note that "more" does not mean "complete".
- deleted 4y ago
capableweb 4y ago
> This content is not available in your country/region. At least they are not spitting in my face and telling me that I matter and they would loooove to be available in my region. I like this concise message better. Here's a mirror for the poor souls like me: https://archive.ph/sdyh3 https://archive.ph/sdyh3
- jimbob45 4y ago
  What region, if you don’t mind saying?
  - shoghicp 4y ago
    Seeing the same in Sweden
  - roywiggins 4y ago
    A lot of American local news sites started blocking all of Europe after GDPR went into effect, it's probably that.
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      What I still don’t get is: wouldn’t it still be worth enough money to segment the traffic onto something that doesn’t do any tracking and at least throw Adsense on it? it seems to be for sites like archive.to anyway These are entire networks doing this probably running a core CMS.
      - azinman2 4y ago
        It’s a local media outfit. Their international traffic is probably just this single article.
        guitarbill 4y ago
        If that were true, they wouldn't even have to worry about the GDPR. But it's almost never a "local media outfit" in the traditional sense; they're owned by a huge media company worth billions. And they might have to care about GDPR.
keepquestioning 4y ago
Are the Corps of Engineers like a roving squad of problem solvers? What is their mandate?
- bardworx 4y ago
  They are a division of the US Army.
- routerl 4y ago
  Engineering corps always also have civil responsibilities. For instance, in the United States, the Army Corps of engineers is responsible for dredging canals. Providing drinking water to a population is one of the archetypal roles of military engineers.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    They also have a huge presence in nearby Vicksburg (waterways), so it might have been an easy resource to call on.
  - mturmon 4y ago
    Since it’s a weekend, if people have time, here’s the classic narrative summary by John McPhee of the Mississippi delta and the role of the Corps: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya
    - sour-taste 4y ago
      Just wanted to say thanks for the recommendation. Excellent article though it took me a few days to finish.
      - mturmon 4y ago
        "Atchafalaya" is one of four articles compiled into a book, The Control of Nature, that is also excellent. One other of the four that I remember from that book is about how erosion shapes the Los Angeles basin -- "Los Angeles Against the Mountains".
freeslave 4y ago
OP has heavily editorialized the title. Actual title is "Jackson’s Water Crisis: The latest updates" and the article states that the Army corps of Engineers arrived sometime prior to Sept 2.
- wyager 4y ago
  OP gave an accurate summary of the most important events of the article, occurring around sept. 1st. If you had to condense this article to a maximally informative 1-line title, that's a pretty decent job
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Whether or not it's a decent job doesn't change the fact that it's an editorialization. The chief addition by the submitter ("resolved within 24 hours") doesn't match the timeline given in the article and isn't even claimed within it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wdb 4y ago
Personally, I don't really understand these water crises in the US. They already had issues in Flint (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis) and now in Jackson? Why is so difficult to get safe drinking water in the US?
- UberFly 4y ago
  Water issues in Flint and Jackson does not equal difficulty getting safe drinking water in the US. It means there were water system problems in Flint and Jackson. It's a big country.
- duxup 4y ago
  Managing / paying for these things is a local issue. Poor communities are in less position to deal with these things. Most others do fine.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    This is not about lack of funds. Places around the world much poorer than poor US municipalities manage to have working water supply.
    - duxup 4y ago
      I don’t think that your first sentence has anything to do with the rest of them.
      - xyzzyz 4y ago
        If you need it spelled out, the second sentence points out that you can have working water supply with little funds, and so if the failing US municipalities cannot manage to have working water supply despite having a lot more funds than other places, the problem does not stem from the lack of funds.
        duxup 4y ago
marklyon 4y ago
Some of the best reporting on this issue is at http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/p/jackson-water-crisis.html http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/p/jackson-water-crisis.html The site was instrumental in uncovering the EPA reporting that the city tried to hide for more than a year and has direct sources involved in the operation of the plant.
- dmix 4y ago
  > EPA reporting that the city tried to hide for more than a year Sounds like the mayor hid the EPA report from the city council. Not sure how something like that can happen.
  - tomohawk 4y ago
    And then, like in many cases of malfeasance, the mayor and others involved tried to deflect blame by claiming they were victims of a racist system. This made the situation even more toxic. It's embarrassing that the press uncritically amplified these claims without actually investigating or understanding what was going on. This does show the strength of our federal system, though. The local politics had a failure by putting in this mayor who is well outside of mainstream politics. This resulted in problems, such as the the water system not being operated properly. Eventually, the state got involved and raised the alarm, but like any messenger, they took a few arrows for their efforts. Eventually the feds got involved, and the Army Corps was able to put things on a better path.
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  I'm sorry but the way that blog looks, the types of comments it attracts, and the general tenor of the text makes me reluctant to take it at face value. Do you have a citation for your claim that this is some of the best reporting?
  - devilbunny 4y ago
    He certainly has some... unusual commenters, but really, he's about the best there is, unless you're on one of his hobby-horse topics that I've really failed to get excited about. (The water situation is not one, although the mayor's habit of trying to hide what his administration is doing from the press is.) I live locally.

170 points by tomohawk 4y ago

According to the article the Corps arrived 10 days ago and the boil water notice is still in effect, so the only factual part of the editorialized headline appears to be "Jackson, MS". Anyway, you'd expect the federal government to be able to repair a water treatment facility in a tiny city within a few days.

notart666 4y ago
I mean not really. You're expecting them to change infrastructure that's failed in a few days when the time involved in manual labor alone would take more than just a few days without even assessing the situation on why it failed and what's the best way to fix the solution.
- timcavel 4y ago
- Spooky23 4y ago
  This stuff isn’t super complicated, but it needs to be funded. My spouse was in a leadership position in a municipal water utility for several years. You have to make capital investments to maintain pumps, filtration systems and have operational funds to perform testing and repairs. Municipal government often struggles with capital investment, especially in states that tightly regulate the ability of cities to bond or wherever the governor has the ability to control municipal authorities. There’s a “starve the beast” philosophy in some quarters that creates issues like this. Money is usually the root cause. Incompetence is usually the result. Another common dumb move is selling the water system to a private entity. Because governments are both more efficient and have a lower cost structure for raising capital, in the long run that leads to higher utility rates and deferred investment.
  - Bloating 4y ago
    $ fixes everything
  - briandear 4y ago
    It is funded. But the corrupt government of Jackson squandered it. https://www.wapt.com/amp/article/jackson-mayor-accuses-city-council-members-of-taking-bribes/39265863 https://www.wapt.com/amp/article/jackson-mayor-accuses-city-... Chattanooga, TN has a similar size and no water crisis. As does dozens of other similarly sized towns. Other towns in Mississippi also don’t have the issue. Water is entirely a municipal responsibility and Jackson is a horribly run city. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/26791/no-efforts-to-recruit-epa-says-jackson-failed-to-address-water-system-needs https://www.mississippifreepress.org/26791/no-efforts-to-rec...
    - cma 4y ago
      The first article is about trash collection. It might show accusations of corruption, but otherwise doesn't seem related to water. The second article never alleges corruption. It does say Governor Reeves "[never spoke] to the mayor directly about the ongoing crisis." I'm not sure if the whole crisis is about the number of water operators, which it focuses on.
  - briandear 4y ago
    Governments aren’t more efficient and don’t have a lower cost structure. Anyone that believes otherwise has never been involved with government projects.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  I think they are just expecting the title of the post to be accurate. If the issue cannot be resolved in 24 hours the post should not say it was resolved in 24 hours.
elicash 4y ago
> Anyway, you'd expect the federal government to be able to repair a water treatment facility in a tiny city within a few days. Sounds like a short timeframe to me?
- Bloating 4y ago
  hum... yea of much faith
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Almost the entire job of the military is to move materiel around the world and install it in a matter of days.
Izkata 4y ago
Sounds like both are true: The problems have been fixed already, but the notice is still in effect because they need to flush out the distribution pipes and that just takes time.
wcarss 4y ago
(disclaimer: I'm not a resident or any kind of expert, but I did read the article down to ~August 30th.) The "crisis" referred to appears to mean the recent loss of pressure throughout the system, which happened after the boil water advisory, active since July 29th. The boil water advisory should be considered a crisis of its own, I agree, but the loss of pressure meant many could not get even basic washing and toilet use done, which made international news. The article is written in a difficult to follow reverse chronological format, but it is clear from its contents that ~24 hours after the arrival of the Corps (at a time when other services were already working on the problem and had likely made big progress), pressure in the system was increased to about 86 psi and nearly the entire system had water supply again: the immediate, primary, news-worthy crisis was then resolved, and has since stayed resolved. Beyond that, work has been done to achieve the higher target pressure desired (also done), get production up and clean out contaminated tanks and beds (mostly done), and to set things up for the full test needed to remove the advisory (not yet done, but anticipated to be soon). The headline is a strange fact to pick out in all this, but it does seem to be essentially true.
- ars 4y ago
  It's not a strange fact, it's another way of saying that the leadership of Jackson is so incompetent that they can't even fix something that takes just 24 hours to repair once competent people arrive onsite. From you news you might imagine they had some huge disaster that would take weeks to fix, but actually it's pure incompetence.
  - andirk 4y ago
    A serious water crisis like this can be attributed to lack of funds, a series of unfortunate events, and/or incompetence. Flint was incompetence but more like intentional criminal acts. If the Corps fixed the Jackson issues in a day or two, then those state/local officials are not fit for their jobs. Right? What am I missing?
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    No it’s racism by the water treatment plant designers
cbozeman 4y ago
Jackson is 1/3rd the size of New York City (114 sq. mi. vs 302 sq. mi.). You're mistaking the tiny population of 150,000 or so as a proxy for it's size.
dang 4y ago
Ok, we've reverted the title. Submitted title was "Jackson MS water crisis resolved within 24 hours of Corps of Engr on site". Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dpeck 4y ago

There seems to be a lot of misinformation going on with Jackson’s water situation. It’s disconcerting to see this level of “fog of war” happening in a state capital. I’ve seen everything from completely irreparable forever to already fixed being reported within days of each other.

tjr225 4y ago
Don’t trust anything you read on the internet.
- scrame 4y ago
  Does that include this comment?
  - macksd 4y ago
    It would even include any answers to that question.
    - vidanay 4y ago
      I don't believe it.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - tjr225 4y ago
    Use your best judgment. I know I will.
tenpies 4y ago
This is one of those comical cases where the State and its complicit media has proven to be so utterly untrustworthy that I put more trust on social media reports from people living there. Note that "more" does not mean "complete".
deleted 4y ago

capableweb 4y ago

> This content is not available in your country/region. At least they are not spitting in my face and telling me that I matter and they would loooove to be available in my region. I like this concise message better. Here's a mirror for the poor souls like me: https://archive.ph/sdyh3 https://archive.ph/sdyh3

jimbob45 4y ago
What region, if you don’t mind saying?
- shoghicp 4y ago
  Seeing the same in Sweden
- roywiggins 4y ago
  A lot of American local news sites started blocking all of Europe after GDPR went into effect, it's probably that.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    What I still don’t get is: wouldn’t it still be worth enough money to segment the traffic onto something that doesn’t do any tracking and at least throw Adsense on it? it seems to be for sites like archive.to anyway These are entire networks doing this probably running a core CMS.
    - azinman2 4y ago
      It’s a local media outfit. Their international traffic is probably just this single article.
      - guitarbill 4y ago
        If that were true, they wouldn't even have to worry about the GDPR. But it's almost never a "local media outfit" in the traditional sense; they're owned by a huge media company worth billions. And they might have to care about GDPR.

keepquestioning 4y ago

Are the Corps of Engineers like a roving squad of problem solvers? What is their mandate?

bardworx 4y ago
They are a division of the US Army.
routerl 4y ago
Engineering corps always also have civil responsibilities. For instance, in the United States, the Army Corps of engineers is responsible for dredging canals. Providing drinking water to a population is one of the archetypal roles of military engineers.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  They also have a huge presence in nearby Vicksburg (waterways), so it might have been an easy resource to call on.
- mturmon 4y ago
  Since it’s a weekend, if people have time, here’s the classic narrative summary by John McPhee of the Mississippi delta and the role of the Corps: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya
  - sour-taste 4y ago
    Just wanted to say thanks for the recommendation. Excellent article though it took me a few days to finish.
    - mturmon 4y ago
      "Atchafalaya" is one of four articles compiled into a book, The Control of Nature, that is also excellent. One other of the four that I remember from that book is about how erosion shapes the Los Angeles basin -- "Los Angeles Against the Mountains".

freeslave 4y ago

OP has heavily editorialized the title. Actual title is "Jackson’s Water Crisis: The latest updates" and the article states that the Army corps of Engineers arrived sometime prior to Sept 2.

wyager 4y ago
OP gave an accurate summary of the most important events of the article, occurring around sept. 1st. If you had to condense this article to a maximally informative 1-line title, that's a pretty decent job
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Whether or not it's a decent job doesn't change the fact that it's an editorialization. The chief addition by the submitter ("resolved within 24 hours") doesn't match the timeline given in the article and isn't even claimed within it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wdb 4y ago

Personally, I don't really understand these water crises in the US. They already had issues in Flint (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis) and now in Jackson? Why is so difficult to get safe drinking water in the US?

UberFly 4y ago
Water issues in Flint and Jackson does not equal difficulty getting safe drinking water in the US. It means there were water system problems in Flint and Jackson. It's a big country.
duxup 4y ago
Managing / paying for these things is a local issue. Poor communities are in less position to deal with these things. Most others do fine.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  This is not about lack of funds. Places around the world much poorer than poor US municipalities manage to have working water supply.
  - duxup 4y ago
    I don’t think that your first sentence has anything to do with the rest of them.
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      If you need it spelled out, the second sentence points out that you can have working water supply with little funds, and so if the failing US municipalities cannot manage to have working water supply despite having a lot more funds than other places, the problem does not stem from the lack of funds.
      - duxup 4y ago

marklyon 4y ago

Some of the best reporting on this issue is at http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/p/jackson-water-crisis.html http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/p/jackson-water-crisis.html The site was instrumental in uncovering the EPA reporting that the city tried to hide for more than a year and has direct sources involved in the operation of the plant.

dmix 4y ago
> EPA reporting that the city tried to hide for more than a year Sounds like the mayor hid the EPA report from the city council. Not sure how something like that can happen.
- tomohawk 4y ago
  And then, like in many cases of malfeasance, the mayor and others involved tried to deflect blame by claiming they were victims of a racist system. This made the situation even more toxic. It's embarrassing that the press uncritically amplified these claims without actually investigating or understanding what was going on. This does show the strength of our federal system, though. The local politics had a failure by putting in this mayor who is well outside of mainstream politics. This resulted in problems, such as the the water system not being operated properly. Eventually, the state got involved and raised the alarm, but like any messenger, they took a few arrows for their efforts. Eventually the feds got involved, and the Army Corps was able to put things on a better path.
JeremyNT 4y ago
I'm sorry but the way that blog looks, the types of comments it attracts, and the general tenor of the text makes me reluctant to take it at face value. Do you have a citation for your claim that this is some of the best reporting?
- devilbunny 4y ago
  He certainly has some... unusual commenters, but really, he's about the best there is, unless you're on one of his hobby-horse topics that I've really failed to get excited about. (The water situation is not one, although the mayor's habit of trying to hide what his administration is doing from the press is.) I live locally.