JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The federal government will put $600 million toward repairing the troubled water system in Mississippi‘s capital city — a project that the mayor has said could cost billions of dollars.
Funding for Jackson water is included in a $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that passed the Senate on Thursday and the House on Friday. President Joe Biden is anticipated to sign it into law.
“As families begin to assemble for the vacation season, today’s motion providing emergency funding to deal with the basic need of protected drinking water for each household in Jackson must be celebrated as a promise of equitable infrastructure services for all families in all places,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who lives in Jackson, said in an announcement Friday.
Jackson is a majority-Black city of nearly 150,000, with about 25% of residents living in poverty.
Town has had water woes for years, and its system nearly collapsed in late August after heavy rainfall flooded the Pearl River and exacerbated problems on the essential water treatment plant. Most of Jackson lost running water for several days, and other people had to attend in lines for water to drink, cook, bathe and flush toilets.
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Since late July, people in town had been advised to boil water before consuming it because health officials had found cloudy water that would cause illness. That advisory remained in place until mid-September.
In early November, state officials announced that Jackson would receive $35.6 million for water system improvements — money that got here from the federal government through the American Rescue Plan Act. Town was required to make a dollar-for-dollar match from its share of the rescue plan funding, bringing that total to greater than $71 million.
In late November, the U.S. Justice Department made a rare intervention by filing a proposal to appoint a third-party manager for the Jackson system. That was meant to be an interim step while the federal government, town and the Mississippi State Department of Health try to barter a court-enforced consent decree, the department said. The goal is to attain long-term sustainability of the system and town’s compliance with the Secure Drinking Water Act and other laws.
Henefin is overseeing work that features a winterization project to make the water system less vulnerable and a plan to extend staffing at Jackson’s two treatment plants, which have had a shortage of expert staff.
In an announcement Friday, the EPA administrator said he’s grateful to Congress for committing money to Jackson.
“The people of Jackson — like all people on this country — deserve access to wash, protected, and reliable water,” Regan said.
Johnson said the federal funding wouldn’t have been approved without advocacy from Jackson residents and leadership from the Biden administration and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat whose district includes most of Jackson.
“While this funding is a major step in the suitable direction, it represents only a down payment,” Johnson said. “NAACP and our partners will proceed to fight to guard Black and brown communities from environmental racism in Jackson and across the country.”
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