The Water Woes of Jackson, Miss., Explained

The Mississippi city is another example of failed local government

WSJ editorial.

"It’s inevitable these days that any urban calamity immediately becomes a progressive parable of systemic racism and “anti-government ideology,” as one columnist put it. That’s been the media spin after last week’s failure of a water treatment plant in Jackson, Miss., but the truth isn’t that simple. This is another local government failure of the kind that is becoming all too common in America’s cities.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said Monday that “we have returned water pressure to the city,” but Jackson residents suffered a week without a reliable water supply after flooding of the Pearl River overwhelmed the 30-year-old O.B. Curtis water treatment plant. Much of the blame belongs to chronic mismanagement by elected officials in the city of about 150,000, which is also the state capital.

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Ensuring safe and reliable drinking water is fundamentally a local responsibility under the U.S. federalist system, with the state and federal government providing some oversight. But many cities like Jackson are struggling to perform this core government responsibility.

Jackson’s water woes aren’t new. In 2014, 90% of city voters approved a one percentage-point increase in the sales tax in part to fund water and sewer repairs. In the past nine years, the city has allocated nearly $490 million from its capital budget to water and sewers—about $3,200 per resident. But much of the money hasn’t been well spent, and the city’s water problems have worsened.

In the month before the flood, Jackson residents were under a boil-water notice—a frequent occurrence in the city—due to failed pumps at the Curtis plant. In April 2021, an electrical fire caused the plant to temporarily shut down, and a winter storm that year also interrupted the water supply for many residents for weeks. The city’s progressive mayor, Democrat Chokwe Lumumba, blames white state Republicans for not providing sufficient funding.

Yet the state made available nearly $170 million in loans and grants from 2016 to 2021 for Jackson’s water and sewer infrastructure. Earlier this year, Mr. Lumumba grumbled when the state offered another $25 million from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds because lawmakers insisted on exercising oversight on how the money was spent. The state had good reason.

In March 2020, the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued an Emergency Administrative Order to Jackson citing conditions “that present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the persons served” by the water system. The city had “failed to perform filter maintenance” at both of its water treatment plants, EPA noted. Jackson residents say the city doesn’t respond to calls when pipes burst or sewage backs up in their homes.

The progressive media narrative is that Jackson’s problems are the inevitable result of whites fleeing the predominantly black city, resulting in a shrinking of the local tax base. But many blacks have been escaping too. Blame lousy schools and infrastructure and a homicide rate that is among the highest in the U.S. In any case, city revenue increased to $264 million from $242 million between 2018 and 2020. Yet the city’s water and sewage disposal system ran $27 million in operating deficits during that time.

Uncollected bills are one problem. Faulty meters installed under a $90 million contract with Siemens in 2013 have resulted in the city losing as much as $1.8 million a month, according to the Jackson Water Sewer Business Administration. In March 2020 as Covid hit, the state imposed a two-month moratorium on water shutoffs owing to unpaid bills. But the city maintained a moratorium until September 2021, which meant the city collected less money to fund repairs.

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Jackson’s competence problems read like those in Detroit and Flint, Mich. State receiverships helped fix their chronic fiscal and management problems, and this is an idea worth considering for Jackson. Gov. Reeves has promised to cover half the costs of the repairs for the current crisis, but Jackson needs more help than money alone can provide."