Politicians have the power to change history through leadership and solid public policy. They shouldn’t try to rewrite it.
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Here’s how you can support Mississippi Today’s relentless pursuit for answers
In my first week at Mississippi Today in September of 2018, I sat on the floor in the middle of the newsroom, federal financial reports from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program splayed in front of me. “I am investigating our state’s TANF program,” I wrote in an email to my editor. “Where is the money going and where is it not? We know the TANF program has not improved our rate of poverty: is that an unfortunate reality or the result of negligence? Even by design?”
Over the last four years, I’ve sought that answer.
What followed was the largest public fraud case in state history.
Officials stole or misspent tens of millions of these federal dollars that could have been used to provide food, child care, workforce training or cash assistance to tens of thousands of vulnerable families. We first broke the story in 2020 about the role that former NFL quarterback Brett Favre played in two pet projects that received welfare funds.
But it wasn’t until I got my hands on some private text messages earlier this year that Mississippians learned just how involved their governor was at the time.
“I will open a hole,” then-Gov. Phil Bryant texted Favre, days before millions of welfare dollars began flowing to the athlete’s pharmaceutical venture.
Our series, The Backchannel, provided a groundbreaking glimpse into the inner workings of state government and altered the course of the ongoing investigation, pressuring officials to acknowledge just how high up the corruption went.
Mississippi Today is relentless in its pursuit of answers. But the reporting isn’t cheap. In the last four years, I’ve filed more than 140 public records requests, which have cost thousands of dollars, and traveled everywhere from Marks to Kiln to tell Mississippi’s story.
You can help us continue this work:
Most of all, keep reading. You keep reading, and we’ll keep going to uncover the truth.
Now through December 31, the Maddox Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s education program, and additional supporters will match your new recurring donation dollar-for-dollar, combined up to $54,000. That means your $25 turns into $100 to continue telling your stories.
Maddox Foundation was founded by Dan Maddox in 1968. He and his wife, Margaret Maddox, had a commitment to young people, a love of nature and a vision for making their corner of the world a better place. Maddox Foundation President Robin Hurdle has continued their legacy, which lives on through the current work of the foundation.
Maddox Foundation, located in Hernando, has made many signature investment grants into youth development. These investments include renovating and supporting the Margaret Maddox Family YMCA; putting an internet-connected computer in every public classroom in Mississippi; creating innovative places for children to learn and play; establishing the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi; and funding the Education Director position and the MTV exhibit at the Grammy Museum Mississippi.
The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation (JLFF), based in Berkeley, CA, supports organizations that advance social justice by promoting world-changing work in investigative journalism, the arts, documentary film and democracy. As a small foundation, JLFF’s investment in NewsMatch allows the Foundation to make a difference across the entire field of local investigative journalism.
The Hewlett Foundation’s Education program supports media outlets that strengthen the information ecosystem around our country’s K-12 education systems. They believe that local communities are a key part of improving teaching and learning opportunities for every student.
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Doce hospitales de Mississippi obtienen la calificación ‘A’ del grupo de seguridad hospitalaria
Read in English: Twelve Mississippi hospitals earn ‘A’ rating from hospital safety group
La organización sin fines de lucro Leapfrog Group publicó sus calificaciones de seguridad hospitalaria para el otoño de 2022, y 12 hospitales de Mississippi, incluido el Hospital Greenwood Leflore con problemas financieros, recibieron una calificación A.
La calificación, que se asigna dos veces al año a unos 3,000 hospitales generales de atención aguda en todo el país, se basa en cómo los hospitales y otras organizaciones de atención médica protegen a sus pacientes de errores, lesiones, accidentes e infecciones. El puntaje proviene del desempeño de los hospitales en más de 30 medidas nacionales de los Centros de Servicios de Medicare y Medicaid (CMS), la Encuesta de hospitales Leapfrog y otros datos.
El hospital más grande del estado y el único centro médico académico obtuvo una C por cuarto año consecutivo.
Ningún hospital de Mississippi recibió una calificación F y un hospital recibió una D: Merit Health Biloxi. Cada grado se basa en el desempeño de los hospitales en cinco categorías: infecciones, problemas con la cirugía, problemas de seguridad, prácticas para prevenir errores y médicos, enfermeras y personal del hospital.
“Tomadas en conjunto, esas medidas de desempeño producen una calificación de una sola letra que representa el desempeño general de un hospital para mantener a los pacientes a salvo de daños y errores médicos prevenibles”, afirma su sitio web.
Según el grupo, 250,000 personas mueren cada año por errores prevenibles en los hospitales.
Aquí está el desglose de las calificaciones de los hospitales de Mississippi:
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With hospitals under strain, health officials beg people to get COVID, flu vaccines
Larger regional hospitals in Mississippi – where the sickest patients often get their care – are full, and state health officials are begging Mississippians to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu to protect themselves and the health care system.
“It’s the inability to transfer (patients) to a higher level of care – our Level 1 and Level 2 hospitals are really being swamped,” State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said Thursday. “… We’ve been having a lot of transfers go out of state.”
Hospitals in neighboring states are also in similar situations and not able to accept transfers.
As of noon, some hospitals in Tennessee were not accepting transfers, said Jim Craig, senior deputy and director of health protection at the Mississippi State Department of Health.
Available intensive care unit (ICU) beds around Mississippi are dwindling, with 65 beds available statewide – a trend similar to the past two winters, said Edney.
As of Thursday, only 27 ICU beds were available at larger hospitals.
“That’s 27 beds for everything – trauma, strokes, heart attacks. Not just flu and COVID,” he said. “We want to protect those beds as best we can.”
As of 1 p.m. Thursday, the University of Mississippi Medical Center – the state’s only Level 1 trauma center – was at capacity, meaning beds are full, said a spokesperson for UMMC.
St. Dominic Memorial Hospital in Jackson is also experiencing issues with capacity.
“St. Dominic’s is working diligently to explore every possible solution to meet the care and safety needs of patients in the communities we serve,” said Meredith Bailess, the hospital’s marketing director.
Edney, along with State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers, urged Mississippians to get their bivalent COVID-19 booster, which includes a component of the original virus strain and a component of the omicron variant to provide better protection against the current dominant strain of the virus.
“This (bivalent booster) is a very important booster vaccine to provide protection not only against infection but also protection from those hospitalizations and protect us from deaths,” said Byers. “It’s extremely important for us now, especially the most vulnerable people in our population, to make sure everyone who is eligible is up to date with the bivalent booster vaccine.”
Mississippi’s bivalent booster uptake has been low, as has the nation’s.
Mississippi is seeing “very high” flu activity, and Edney and Byers also encouraged people to get their flu shots.
Mississippians can make an appointment for COVID-19 and flu vaccines at the health department website. Vaccine appointments are also available at the federal website vaccines.gov.
People can get the updated COVID-19 booster even if they have not gotten an earlier booster shot. That means that if you got two doses of Pfizer, Moderna or Noravax, or one dose of Johnson & Johnson, you qualify for the new booster as long as two months have passed since your last dose. You are also eligible if you got a booster dose more than two months ago.
“Do what you can to protect yourself and your family so you don’t wind up in the health care system when it’s under stress,” said Edney.
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Marshall Ramsey: Here Comes Santa Claus
Obviously tax cuts will be all the rage this next session (it’s an election year!). For the record, I don’t like paying taxes — but I understand that there are some services that we as a society depend on. And those services need to be paid for. (Two sentences that end with prepositions — my English teacher is going to come back from the grave.) We’ll see. Will they give us a rebate check or eliminate the income tax? (Not a good idea, IMHO — but I’m not a Koch Brother, so there.) Just remember, when you hear, “starve the beast,” you might be the beast.
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Ethics Commission postpones finalizing order stating Legislature not bound by open meetings law
Members of the Mississippi Ethics Commission postponed on Thursday adopting “a final order” to support their controversial conclusion that the Mississippi Legislature is not bound by the state’s open meetings law.
Long-time Commission Chair Ben Stone proposed placing in the final order that while the open meetings law does not specifically cite the Legislature, the Mississippi Constitution clearly mandates that the Legislature conduct its business in the open.
While Stone said the Ethics Commission is authorized to rule on open meetings issues related solely to the law and is not authorized to interpret the constitution, he said he believes the language related to the constitution could still be included in the final order.
“We are not allowed to interpret it, but we are able to cite it and put it in our opinion,” Stone said at the start of the specially called meeting that was conducted via Zoom. “The Legislature is not going to close its doors regardless of what we do here today.”
The eight-member commission adjourned Thursday without making a final decision, but scheduled another meeting for Dec. 14 in an attempt to resolve the issue.
The issue arose in response to a legal challenge by the Mississippi Free Press to the Ethics Commission of whether House Speaker Philip Gunn is violating the state’s open meetings laws when he holds meetings of the Republican Caucus behind closed doors. According to various sources, as reported by Mississippi Today, legislative business is routinely discussed in the closed caucus meetings.
The Republican Caucus consists of 75 of the 122 members of the Mississippi House. A majority constitutes a quorum that is needed for the House to conduct business.
In addressing the issue of the caucus meetings, the Ethics Commission by a 5-3 vote last week ruled that the Legislature is not covered by the open meetings law.
Many members stuck to that opinion in Thursday’s special meeting.
“We believe the Legislature should be open, is required to be open,” said Commissioner Stephen Burrow, but the issue is “outside the jurisdiction of the Ethics Commission.”
He said it is up to a courts, not the Ethics Commission, to make the final decision on whether the Legislature is mandated to be open.
Commissioner Samuel Kelly said he believed legislators “clearly intended to keep themselves out” of the open meetings law. The law specifies certain bodies that should be open. It lists that certain legislative committees shall be open, but it does not cite the Legislature as a whole. By the same token, in citing specific entities that shall be exempt from the open meetings law, it also does not mention the Legislature.
The open meetings law specifies that “all official meetings of any public body, unless otherwise provided in this chapter or in the constitution of the United States of America or the state of Mississippi are declared to be public meetings and shall be open to the public at all times.” The law does allow closed sessions of public bodies in certain instances, such as to discuss lawsuits or personnel issues.
The final decision of the Ethics Commission, which consists of political appointees made by the speaker, lieutenant governor, governor and chief justice of the Supreme Court, can be appealed to the courts.
Commissioner Maxwell Luter said he is “very concerned” about the precedent that would be established by saying the Legislature is not covered by the open meetings law. He also said that he feared that such a ruling would negatively impact the perception of the Ethics Commission.
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State health department braces for impending hospital crisis
As the Mississippi health care crisis worsens and threatens to imminently shutter hospitals in the Mississippi Delta, the state Department of Health is taking steps to prepare for the impending disaster.
The Mississippi State Department of Health, an agency that has been gutted by budget cuts and weakened services over the past decade, was not staffed nor funded to take on the full burden of replacing health care services lost if hospitals close.
But State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney recently told lawmakers the department, in anticipation of an increase of health care deserts in the Delta, has begun assessing how it can help.
“We’re studying where health care deserts are emerging or we think they’re going to be,” Edney told members of the Senate Public Health Committee on Nov. 21, adding that the Health Department increasing services is “usually not a good thing.”
“We’re the provider of last resort,” he continued. “We’re there for public health. When you see us in perinatal care, hypertension, diabetes management – that means these communities aren’t being served.”
While more than 38 hospitals across the state are at risk of closing, the Mississippi Delta — the poorest region of the state with already dismal health outcomes — is most susceptible to the crisis. In August, the Delta’s only neonatal intensive care unit in Greenville closed. Greenwood Leflore Hospital has eliminated labor and delivery and other major services over the last several months. Today, the Greenwood hospital’s future is uncertain after negotiations with the University of Mississippi Medical Center to enter into a lease agreement abruptly fell through last month.
Additionally, Sharkey Issaquena Hospital and several other Delta hospitals are in dire financial straits.
A recent report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Reform shows that over half of rural hospitals in Mississippi – or 38 – are at risk of closing. The state has the highest percentage of rural hospitals at immediate risk of closing in the nation, and hospitals as a whole are in a deficit of more than $200 million in 2022, according to the Mississippi Hospital Association.
A 2019 report from the consulting firm Navigant revealed a similar statistic as the one from 2022: half of rural hospitals were at risk of closure then, too. But the difference now is the severity of the situation, said Ryan Kelly, executive director of the Mississippi Rural Hospital Association.
“Hospitals that were bleeding slowly are now bleeding quicker,” said Kelly. “But the underlying problem is still the same.”
With no clear solutions in sight, Edney said the Health Department will do what it can to strengthen the “safety net” in these underserved areas.
“We’ve already got an action plan in place,” Edney told lawmakers.
But when Mississippi Today followed up with the state Health Department and submitted a records request for that plan, department officials responded “… as of now we have no plan on paper.”
Mississippi Today then asked for clarification and details of the plan Edney referenced. A Health Department spokesperson emailed a statement from Jim Craig, senior deputy and director of health protection.
“Our next steps in plan development will be to meet with Delta Community Health Center leaders and coordinate needs and efforts with our Field Services office that coordinates care in county health departments around the state,” the statement read.
Mississippi Today then asked for an interview with Craig or someone else with the department, and the reporter was told she could email questions.
The department said it is “currently evaluating” what services might be needed when responding to a question about whether the focus would first be on the Delta and maternity and infant care.
“Maternal and infant services are one of the service areas we are evaluating,” said Craig in the email.
The state Health Department has closed 10 county health departments in the past decade, nine of which were closed in 2016. It also reduced hours in “several” county health departments around the state, though department officials declined to provide a specific number.
In 2016, it announced it would no longer be providing maternity services at the county health departments.
The Health Department’s mission is to promote and protect the health of Mississippians. The agency does surveillance for diseases such as West Nile virus, flu and sexually transmitted infections, offers disease and injury prevention programming and information and other public health efforts. It also oversees drinking water testing, restaurant permits and inspections, on-site wastewater and sewage system regulation. It is responsible for licensing and regulating child care facilities, nursing homes, and other health care facilities.
There is no timeline for the implementation of the safety net Edney referred to, the department said.
Correction 12/8/21: A previous version of this story identified Ryan Kelly, executive director of the Mississippi Rural Hospital Association, by the incorrect name.
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It’s Valpo vs. Ole Miss for the first time since ’98. Remember?
Valparaiso will visit Ole Miss for a basketball game Saturday, the first time the two teams have met since Valparaiso’s Bryce Drew hit the shot heard around the basketball world.
You know: The shot. It was March 13, 1998, at Oklahoma City, first round of the NCAA Tournament. Ole Miss, a 4-seed, was a big favorite to beat 13-seed Valpo of the Mid-Continent Conference.
Even basketball fans who weren’t alive then likely have seen the shot replayed multiple times. TV networks play it several times every year when March Madness comes around. It has become one of the iconic plays in NCAA Tournament history. The networks still play announcer Ted Johnson’s excited call:
“The inbound pass will be thrown by Jamie Sykes. Carter is pressuring … It’s to Jenkins, to Drew, for the win! GOOD! HE DID IT! BRYCE DREW DID IT! Valpo has won the game! A miracle … An absolute miracle!”
It surely seemed so: Valparaiso 70, Ole Miss 69. For most, it was the feel-good story March Madness is all about, the Cinderella team from a little bitty conference knocks off the favored giant. In this case, the hero was the coach’s son, providing the high point of Homer Drew’s long coaching career.
For Ole Miss, however, it just sucked. For some, nearly a quarter of a century later, it still does.
Carter, who was pressuring the inbounds pass, is Keith Carter, now the Ole Miss athletic director. He was a junior guard at Ole Miss, a terrific player who led the Rebels with 22 points and 11 rebounds in that game. But his numbers are not what Carter remembers most.
“I have probably replayed it in my head a million times over the last 25 years,” Carter said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “I always come back to this: Bryce had just missed an open 3-pointer on their previous possession that would have given them the lead. No way he was going to miss two in a row. You just could not let him have that second opportunity. We did.
“In my mind we were the better team, but we let them hang around and hang around and then a great player hit a great shot. That’s what happens in March Madness. But back then, I’m not sure I understood what that one shot meant.”
Rob Evans did. That was the last game he ever coached at Ole Miss after winning 42 games and taking the Rebels to two NCAA Tournaments his last two years in Oxford. Soon afterward, he took the head coaching job at Arizona State.
“I remember going to the locker room and telling my guys, ‘You are going to see that shot for the rest of your lives,’” Evans said by phone Wednesday from Dallas where he is a special assistant to the athletic director at SMU.
In all, Evans spent 48 years as a college coach after four years as a college player. Says he, “That Valpo game was without a doubt the lowest feeling I ever had in basketball. For us to lose that game in those final seconds, everything had to go right for them and everything had to go wrong for us. And I will forever believe we had a team capable of going deep in that tournament, the Elite Eight or the Final Four.”
That was a fabulous Ole Miss team, one of the best in Rebel basketball history. Led by All American Ansu Sesay, the Rebels were in the nation’s Top 25 the entire season and finished the regular season ranked No. 10. They won at Kentucky. They swept Mississippi State. They thrashed LSU. Twice. They won the SEC West with a 12-4 conference record and finished 22-7 overall. They were a tough, physical team that played especially hard on defense. They were deep in talent. The backcourt was terrific with starting point guard Michael White and wing-man Carter. Sharp-shooting sixth man Joezon Darby provided instant energy and a scoring boost off the bench. Reserve point guards Jason “Buck” Flanagan and Jason Smith would have started for many teams. Center Anthony Boone was an enforcer inside and the team’s spiritual leader, gimpy knees and all. Freshman Rahim Lockhart provided quality depth inside.
They were basketball savvy, too. White is now the head coach at Georgia after successful runs at Louisiana Tech and Florida. Boone is the head coach at Central Arkansas. Lockhart coaches Jones College. Flanigan coaches at Holmes Community College. Sesay, after a long professional career, is an assistant coach at Texas Southern. Darby runs a highly successful basketball training academy Dallas. And Carter, of course, now hires and fires coaches.
Ole Miss was a 10-point favorite over Valpo. Thanks to Carter, who made 4 of 7 3-pointers and tied Drew for game-high scoring with 22 points, the Rebels led most of the way. They were up by four points at halftime and still led by two points going into the final seconds. And then, as Evans put it, everything had to go right for Valpo, wrong for Ole Miss. Sesay rebounded Drew’s miss and was fouled with 4.2 seconds remaining and the Rebels leading 69-67. Sesay could have put the game away, but Sesay, normally a proficient free throw shooter, missed both. Carter battled for the rebound but the ball went out of bounds on the sidelines in front of the Ole Miss bench. Only 2.5 seconds remained. Nearly 25 years later, Carter has vivid memories.
“The official said it went off of me, but I am almost certain I did not I touch it last,” Carter said. “And then when they let them in-bound the ball from the end of the court instead of in front of our bench, which would have been a more difficult angle to make that pass. Still, you have to give them credit for making the play.”
Said Evans, “If the ball just stays in bounds after the missed free throw, we win.”
Still, Valpo had to go the length of the court. That’s hard to do in 2 and half seconds, less time than it took you to read this sentence.
Carter, a high leaper, fronted the in-bounds pass by Sykes. Carter jumped high, as Sykes faked as if to pass. Then, as Carter came down, Sykes rifled a ball down the floor to teammate Bill Jenkins, just over the finger tips of a leaping Lockhart. Jenkins quickly shoveled the ball to Drew, who swished a running 20-footer at the buzzer
“When he shot it, I knew it was in,” Evans said. “Buck (Flanagan) was covering Bryce and took his eyes off him just a split second when the pass was coming down the court. That’s all it took.”
Said Lockhart, “It felt like a death in the family.”
In four months, it will have been 25 years since Drew’s deed was done. In the ensuing years, both Carter and Evans have become friends with Bryce Drew, who now coaches at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix after an NBA career and a stint as the head coach at Vanderbilt.
“Such a good guy, such a good family,” Carter says of Drew, who married a Jackson native, the former Tara Thibodeaux, an accomplished dancer and choreographer.
As it turns out, Evans’ grandson and Bryce and Tara’s son, Homer Drew’s grandson, are teammates on a youth basketball team in Phoenix. What are the odds?
One more note: A man named Bryce Drew (no relation to the more famous Bryce Drew), is now the Manager of Human Relations at Ole Miss. Says Keith Carter, chuckling, “This Bryce Drew is a really good guy, too, but I gotta tell you, it took me a while to get past his name.”
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Jackson meets the man tasked with fixing its water system
The new temporary face of Jackson’s water rehabilitation introduced himself Wednesday night to residents at Forest Hill High School, a recurring backdrop for the city’s drinking water shortcomings.
About 40 residents lined the long lunch tables in the high school’s cafeteria as the night began with Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba catching the audience up on the latest federal intervention.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice appointed Ted Henifin, a veteran water and sewer system professional, to head the third-party management team that will steer the city’s drinking water rehabilitation over the next year. The goal, as the DOJ explained in its order, is to stabilize the water system while the city negotiates a longer-term solution with the Environmental Protection Agency.
As Mississippi Today reported last week, the order gives Henifin’s team broader authority than what Jackson would be allowed normally. For instance, the new management won’t have to comply with state procurement laws that dictate how to advertise and award contracts with public funding. It also has added power to pass rate increases on customer’s water bills, and, because it’s not a government body, it won’t be subject to public record laws.
At Forest Hill High, which often feels the brunt of water pressure issues because of its elevation and its distance from the treatment plants, audience members in the the large cafeteria asked about what these changes meant for their daily lives.
The first person to step up, Johnny Dickerson, wondered why he was seeing high prices on his water bills despite unreliable service.
“You got a $1,000, maybe $1,500 or $2,000 water bill, but you haven’t been using the water,” Dickerson said. “The water comes out brown and soapy, and you say boil it, but how are we going to pay a $5,000, $2,000, $1,000 bill for something we ain’t using?”
Lumumba, recognizing that Dickerson’s experience has been common among Jacksonians, replied that the issues with water meters haven’t been about their accuracy in measuring consumption, but rather communicating those measurements to the city’s offices to send out accurate bills. Residents often see high bills that have accumulated over months, rather than getting monthly bills, the mayor explained.
Dickerson cut the mayor off, saying it didn’t make sense that his bill would be so high if he wasn’t using the water. Frustrated, the man walked off before Lumumba could respond.
Other audience directed their questions at Henifin and the specifics of the new order. Brenda Scott, former mayoral candidate and president of the labor union for city employees, asked what will happen to Jackson’s water plant workers as Henifin’s team and contractors take over operations.
Lumumba said that no city employees will lose their job in the process. Henifin said the contractor will interview employees to see if they’re qualified to work on the team’s projects, in which case they would join the contractor and no longer be a city employee. The mayor added that if not chosen, water plant workers will be relocated within the public works department.
Contracting and water rates
Henifin addressed some of the details in the DOJ order the media has highlighted.
As far as the procurement process, he said Monday that the ability to bypass state law was included because of how long the process can often take, and the new management team only has a year to make a long list of improvements. Henifin added that he will uphold the principles of that law, such as fairness, transparency, and equity. He also said it will be a priority to hire small minority contractors, and there will be a workshop in January for those businesses looking to make bids.
Asked about water rates, Henifin initially said Monday during a press conference that he didn’t think Jackson could afford to do so because of the city’s high poverty rate. On Wednesday, he echoed that he wasn’t in favor of raising rates, but that he couldn’t rule it out.
The DOJ order requires Henifin to write up a funding strategy for the water system within 60 days. If that plan recommends raising rates, the order gives Henifin the ability to do so even if the City Council disapproves.
Replacing water lines
Asked about the city’s plan to upgrade its distribution system, Henifin detailed some of the next steps for making needed water line replacements.
“Here in Jackson you’ve got about 110 miles of small diameter pipe, which is unusual. Most large water systems have eliminated that,” he said. “Current engineering would say that a 6-inch diameter is the smallest water pipe you want to run down the street, and you’ve got a 100 miles of less than 6-inch pipe. You’ve got a lot of other pipe out there, there’s 400 and some miles total, but almost the first line in every study done (of Jackson’s system), the first recommendation is eliminate the small diameter pipes.”
Henifin estimated that it costs about $2 million to replace a mile of water lines, meaning to replace the 100 miles of smaller-than-recommended water lines would total $200 million.
He added that he expects by this summer the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which recently received $20 million from Congress to aid Jackson, will begin work on 10 miles of line upgrades.
Looking down the road, with the current funding available, he said it’s realistic for Jackson to do about 20 miles of line replacements a year, making it a 5- to 10-year process to replace all the small diameter pipes.
‘This wasn’t in my plan‘
Before coming to Jackson, Henifin had just retired in February from a 15-year stint as general manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which he said handled wastewater from 1.8 million Virginians. He had looked forward to taking a break, calling the job during the pandemic a “crushing” experience.
While no longer officially working, he took on a role as a senior fellow with the nonprofit U.S. Water Alliance, where he helped small communities access money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure act.
The nonprofit, as part of an equity initiative, soon connected with Jackson, which at the time was in the middle of a citywide boil water notice. Henifin began advising the city directly and started making regular visits in September. Eventually, when the DOJ began deliberating the city’s future, Henifin offered to take on the role as third-party manager.
“This wasn’t in my plan,” he said. “But as I saw I could offer connections, play off some of my experience, and I really felt the connection with the people I was working with, and I really felt for the 160,000 people in Jackson not having dependable drinking water, and I thought, maybe egotistically, maybe I could make a difference.”
Overall, Henifin, a University of Virginia graduate, spent about 40 years working in Virginia in different government roles, including in Hampton, a city with a similar population size as Jackson.
The DOJ order gives Henifin’s team a $2.98 million budget for a 12-month period. That total includes $400,000 for Henifin’s salary, travel and living expenses; $1.1 million for staff pay and expenses; $1.4 million for contractor and consultant support; and $66,000 for other expenses, such as phones, computers, and insurance.
The order prioritizes 13 projects for the third-party team, which range from making equipment upgrades at the treatment plants, to doing corrosion control, to coming up with a plan to sustainably fund Jackson’s water system for the years to come.
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