OurTupelo

Maisie Brown pulled her aunt’s army green Ford Edge onto I-55, heading north past the port-a-potties outside the Hilton on County Line Road. 

The Jackson State University junior was on a mission last Wednesday – two days after Gov. Tate Reeves declared a water emergency in Jackson – to deliver water to elderly and disabled people in the capital city. Her first stop was Academy Sports and Outdoors, a retailer in the plush city of Madison, to pick up nearly two dozen 24-packs of bottled water. 

That Brown had to trek outside the city limits to buy water is indicative of one of the many systemic issues at the heart of Jackson’s water crisis: The whiter, wealthier suburbs – recipients of population growth post-integration – aren’t dealing with the same crisis today.

“People look down on Jackson, but give it a decade,” Brown said before applying a light-pink shade of Victoria’s Secret lip gloss. “This is going to be everyone’s reality soon.” 

Like most people from the Jackson-metro area, Brown was rarely fazed by the city’s boil water notices, as typical as the crater-like potholes. The 22-year-old grew up seeing stacks of plastic water jugs in her grandparents’ house off State Street – “not because they like to drink water like a fish,” she said, “but sometimes you never know when it’s going to be on the news and they tell you to boil water.” 

But Brown’s attitude changed on Aug. 29, when Reeves announced in an evening press conference that the city would be without clean, running water “indefinitely.” The pressure had dropped so low that many of Jackson’s 150,000 residents weren’t receiving water at all. 

In the coming days, the Mississippi National Guard would be staffing water distribution sites across the city – but getting there would require a car, a significant barrier in a state that has one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the country. 

That night, Brown realized it was unclear how, if at all, the state was planning to bring water to elderly and disabled folks who wouldn’t be able to drive to the distribution sites. So the student activist, known for her role in helping to coordinate the city’s largest protest since the civil rights movement, decided it was time to mobilize. She posted a call-out on social media for volunteers to help her deliver water. 

“The state has consistently ignored Jackson’s asks for help,” she said. “We are not high-priority for the people in power, because of the Black, poverty-stricken population that we are.”

Within 24 hours, Brown raised over nearly $2,500 (it’s more than $6,000 now) and assembled more than 20 JSU students to start the “MS Student Water Crisis Advocacy Team.” Together, they’ve delivered about 1,000 cases of water to more than 200 homes, organizing drop-offs via a shared spreadsheet.  

Brown’s iPhone hasn’t stopped ringing since. That Wednesday morning, she got 14 calls: A Mississippi Emergency Management Agency representative asked if she could include Brown’s number on a list of water distribution resources; a stranger requested a delivery for a friend with multiple sclerosis; several journalists from national media reached out for an interview.

Most calls were from Jacksonians who couldn’t get to the city and state distribution sites. Whether they offered an explanation or not, Brown delivered water. 

“If the government could do everything, then there’d be no nonprofit or grassroots organizations,” she said. “The whole structure of government, the way it’s built today, is not enough to help people. That’s the wall people are running into.” 

As Brown exited I-55, a 917 area code popped up on the Ford Edge’s dashboard. 

“Who is this from New York calling me?” Brown said. 

It was a producer from CNN – the first of five media calls Brown would receive that day on the temporary number she had created for the hotline. Before the producer could finish pitching Brown on a segment, she was interrupted by a Jacksonian who called the hotline for a water delivery. (Brown got so many calls from reporters last week that she had to post on Twitter asking them not to use the hotline.) 

“This is my phone all day long,” Brown said when she hung up. 

A few minutes later, she pulled into the shopping plaza where Academy was located and checked her phone, hoping they wouldn’t cancel her order like the Walmart in Byram had the day before.

Brown spotted two Academy workers wheeling cases of water on a blue platform dolly. She hopped out of the car to greet them, then popped the trunk. One of the workers stared at it for a second and frowned. 

“I know y’all are probably like who the f— is ordering 20 packs of water?” Brown said jokingly. 

“No, I get it,” he replied. “Y’all are good.” 

For Brown, a political science major, the water emergency has sparked big-picture questions about the role of government in a democratic society and who it really serves. The one-party state government doesn’t serve everyone in Mississippi, Brown said, because it was not elected by everyone. Black Mississippians, more likely to vote Democratic, are also disenfranchised at higher rates than white people. 

“We’re a red state, but we’re a Black state too,” Brown said. “People forget that part.” 

This perspective has led Brown to push for change on an array of systemic issues in Mississippi, including the state flag that held the Confederate battle emblem, the “pink tax” on menstrual products, and the disproportionate impact of abortion bans on Black and low-income people. 

Brown said she views this work as a way of building a better world – an outlook she adopted after reading the “Faces at the Bottom of the Well,” a book by Derrick Bell.

“The work you’re doing is not in vain, but will be a model for a new society – a better one,” Brown said, paraphrasing the introduction by the lawyer Michelle Alexander. “That keeps me motivated.” 

On her way back from Madison, Brown stopped at her first drop-off, an orange-and-red apartment complex behind a car dealership on South Frontage Road. Two young men helped Brown carry the 29-lb packs of water cases to the front door. 

Then it was off to west Jackson, where Brown had two stops to make. The first was at a house with red trim on Maple Street near Lanier High School, the first high school built for Black kids in Jackson. The woman who lived there wasn’t home but worried someone might take the water cases, so she asked Brown to leave them behind the bushes next to her doorstep. 

Even though Brown is from Madison, she’s well acquainted with this part of the city – her dad’s side of the family used to own a restaurant here, but now it’s boarded up. Brown also went to school in the city, because her dad is a principal in Jackson’s school district. On the weekends, he’d go to block parties to meet the community, and she’d tag along. 

“It’s very rare that people who don’t live in Jackson try to go to school here,” she said. “It’s always the opposite way.” 

Indeed, the phenomenon that Brown is getting at – white flight – is another contributing factor to Jackson’s water crisis. The overgrown bushes and derelict buildings in west Jackson are an above-ground symptom of the billions in lost tax dollars as 71% of white residents have left since 1980. Beneath the city, the water lines are deteriorating just the same. 

The temperature was starting to get hot and muggy. Outside the yellow duplex where Brown made her next delivery, a man was blowing cut grass off the sidewalk. Brown thought about delivering water to the next-door neighbor, but decided against it – a pitbull, panting in front of a silver water bowl, guarded the porch. 

As Brown turned to leave, he asked if she had enough cases for the neighboring house – if so, he’d call the man who lived there to ask. 

“How long y’all doing the water?” he asked.

“As long as the money comes in to keep doing more,” she replied. 

Brown’s last stop for the day was in North Jackson at a red brick house in a subdivision near Hope Spring Missionary Baptist Church, one of the oldest churches in Jackson, established in 1865 to serve freed slaves. A woman answered the door, revealing a large painting of a white, fluffy cat in the dim entryway. 

“You brought me some water,” she remarked. “I didn’t have any water. Thank you.”

Sitting in her car in the woman’s driveway, Brown took a moment to pause. She turned up the volume on “America Has a Problem,” her favorite song from Beyonce’s latest album, and thought about preparing for a TV interview that night. 

“Alright,” she said, “let me figure out some things while I’m at a stopping point.” 

Then her phone rang.

The images in this story are from Deep Indigo Collective, a visual storytelling resource supporting news outlets reporting on the local impacts of environmental threats and the climate crisis. As a 501(c)(3) organization, Deep Indigo is proud to produce original visual journalism on behalf of our editorial partners across the United States.

The post ‘The wall people are running into’: For JSU student, city water crisis highlights limitation of government appeared first on Mississippi Today.

And will have separate press conferences to tell us about it.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Teamwork appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Thanks to misleading letters sent by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid in recent years, tens of thousands of new moms may have chosen to forgo health care after giving birth – even as the federal government was sending Mississippi extra money to help pay for their care during the pandemic. 

Mississippians whose pregnancies were covered by Medicaid retained full benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic under federal law, instead of getting kicked off 60 days after giving birth as they ordinarily would under state policy. That should have allowed them to keep seeing their doctors and get treatment for conditions like postpartum depression, high blood pressure and anything else they needed to stay healthy after their baby’s birth. 

But many women thought they didn’t have coverage because of letters sent to every recipient of pregnancy Medicaid telling them they were no longer eligible. While healthy adults under 65 generally don’t qualify for Medicaid, pregnant women are covered as long as they meet income requirements, and about 60% of births in Mississippi are covered by Medicaid. An untold number of pregnancy Medicaid recipients may have stopped going to the doctor after receiving the letters, believing they would be charged as if they had no health insurance. 

Several recipients of the letters told Mississippi Today they only found out they had coverage after going to the doctor, in some cases so desperate for care that they were willing to pay whatever they had to out of pocket. 

“Your Medicaid eligibility has ended,” the sparse letter from the Division of Medicaid said. The heading read “TERMINATION NOTICE – Loss of Medicaid Eligibility.”

A second letter delivered later, titled “NOTICE OF MEDICAID REINSTATEMENT DURING COVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY,” explained that those covered as of March 18, 2020 would have their coverage reinstated. But it did not make reference to the first letter or explain what kind of coverage recipients now had. 

Some women told Mississippi Today they never got the second letter. 

Dr. Anita Henderson, a Hattiesburg pediatrician and president of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said she screens moms for postpartum depression during their newborns’ early checkups. During the public health emergency, she and colleagues expected new moms to retain Medicaid coverage indefinitely. 

“We found that some of those moms were coming back and saying, ‘We don’t have Medicaid, or we don’t know that we have Medicaid.’ Or they were saying, ‘No, I have gotten this termination letter,’” Henderson said. “Once we offered clarification and discovered they still qualified, they would go to that appointment, or we would help set up the appointment and they would go. But if they did not know they had coverage, they may not have utilized it.”

The new moms’ confusion and reluctance to seek care almost certainly saved the Division of Medicaid money – and one expert believes the confusing communication may have been intentional.

The first letter notified the recipients that they had been kicked off of the managed care plan, a program through which the state pays a set amount of money to a “coordinated care organization” each month, which then pays for recipients’ care. 

The reinstatement described in the second letter shifted them to another type of Medicaid in which the state pays directly for each visit and treatment. The fewer services new moms sought, the less money the Division of Medicaid had to spend. 

Joan Alker, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Children and Families (CCF) at Georgetown University and an expert on Medicaid, said she had not heard of other states moving people from managed care to fee-for-service coverage during the pandemic. 

“I fear this is an intentional strategy to cut costs on the backs of these postpartum women,” Alker said. 

Matt Westerfield, communications director for Medicaid, said the department could not provide a “validated analysis” of postpartum spending during the public health emergency by publication time. 

“Generally, it appears that monthly medical costs have exceeded $200 per beneficiary per month in months 3 to 12 of the postpartum period,” he wrote.

The state pays managed care companies between $1,076 and $1,186 monthly per pregnant woman, depending on the beneficiary’s location.  

In a statement to Mississippi Today last week, the Division of Medicaid acknowledged the letters were a mistake. 

“An automated form letter related to disenrollment from a managed care plan should have been updated to mention the continuing availability of full Medicaid benefits,” said Westerfield. “We have directed that the form letter be updated, and staff is currently reviewing other beneficiary communications to make improvements where needed.”

Trista Carlton gave birth to her daughter in June 2021. The 28-year-old Laurel resident had Medicaid as her secondary insurance, and about 60 days postpartum, she got the letter informing her that her coverage had been terminated.

Carlton started rationing her visits to the doctor because she was worried about the cost. 

“Not only do you have your copay, you have what your insurance doesn’t cover afterwards, so it definitely makes you second-guess making a visit to go to the doctor and see what’s going on,” she said. “Having a new baby, that comes with added costs that you’re thinking about. You kind of put yourself on the back burner, not knowing what’s going on.”

She never got the second letter telling her the coverage had been reinstated, but she eventually decided she needed to see her doctor for anxiety and depression. Only then did she learn she still had coverage.

Carlton then called local Medicaid offices in Laurel and Brandon to ask what was going on. She said staff there told her she only had family planning Medicaid coverage, which pays for up to four annual visits related to birth control. Before the Public Health Emergency, women who gave birth on Medicaid were rolled onto family planning coverage for one year after they lost full coverage. 

“I’ve never really been able to get a direct answer,” she said. “But all of my primary care visits have gone through. And as far as I know, I’m still covered under Medicaid.”

Several other women told Mississippi Today they had similar experiences after receiving the letters. 

Chelsea Brooks, a new mom in Florence, canceled a doctor’s appointment because she got the letter telling her she had lost coverage. More than two months later, she got the reinstatement letter and contacted her doctor. The experience was “very confusing,” she said.

Kristen Elliott, a mom in Brandon, got the first letter a few months ago and thought she had lost coverage. But when she went to the doctor a few weeks ago, she found out she was still covered. 

“I’m not even sure what was going on with it,” she said. 

In March 2020, Congress passed a law requiring “continuous coverage” for Medicaid recipients to ensure no one lost access to health care during the COVID-19 pandemic. That forced states to do something they had never done before: change their systems to stop kicking people off of Medicaid even if they lost eligibility, said Jennifer H. Wagner, director of Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Nearly 150,000 more Mississippians are on Medicaid than before the pandemic, said Westerfield, the state Medicaid communications officer. 

In Mississippi, the termination notice at 60 days postpartum was already programmed to be sent to recipients. Creating a totally new notice to explain instead that recipients still had coverage is “more complicated than it sounds,” Wagner said. Instead, the state just added a second letter telling recipients their coverage was reinstated. 

Wagner said that though she understood why the state sent the letters, they were confusing. 

“Coverage is only good if you know you have it,” she said. 

The continuous coverage requirement also came with extra federal funding for states. That funding exceeded the extra costs of covering more people in every state. But no state got a better deal from the feds than Mississippi, where the extra federal funding was six times higher than the expanded coverage costs, according to an analysis by KFF, a nonprofit research organization. (The state already had the highest federal matching rate in the country before the pandemic.)

By moving women from managed care to fee for service, and then paying for fewer services, the state saved money.

Mississippi has the second-highest share of births covered by Medicaid in the country, at 60%. 

More than 21,000 Mississippi women gave birth while covered by Medicaid in 2020. Nearly all of them should have been able to continue seeing their doctors until the public health emergency ended. The Biden Administration has not yet said when that will happen, but is expected to extend it until at least January 2023. 

Mississippi has a high maternal mortality rate relative to the national average. Black women in Mississippi are three times likelier than white women to die of pregnancy-related complications. 

Doctors and public health advocates argue that extending postpartum Medicaid would save lives and improve infant and maternal health by ensuring women have access to health care for the first year of their baby’s life. After passing the Senate with broad bipartisan support this year, a proposal to extend coverage to a year postpartum died in the House thanks to opposition from Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton. 

Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven and chair of the Medicaid Committee, has vowed to reintroduce the legislation. With abortion now banned in Mississippi, lawmakers are under pressure to help families and babies who suffer the nation’s highest rate of infant mortality. 

Drew Snyder, the director of the Division of Medicaid, has so far declined to take a stance on whether postpartum Medicaid coverage should be extended. But he recently told the talk radio host Paul Gallo that data from the pandemic, when pregnant women didn’t lose coverage after giving birth, could be used to inform the conversation. 

“Maybe one of the benefits of deferring a decision on this is that Mississippi and every other state is going to have 2021 data to show … Did anything happen with maternal health outcomes?” Snyder said. “Particularly late maternal death …  That may be a good argument for advocates of the 12-month [extension] to say, ‘Hey, we need to do this.’”

Mississippi doctors and national experts say that idea ignores the effects of COVID-19 on pregnant women. The virus has been linked to higher rates of stillbirth and maternal death. 

And now, it appears that many women may not have known they still had health insurance throughout the pandemic. 

Henderson saw the coverage help moms – if they knew they had it.

“I have moms who are at two months, four months, six months, 12 months and are on antidepressants and now have those medications covered,” she said. “They are getting therapy. They are getting their asthma and hypertension treated. So, I do know from a parent (and) patient standpoint, that my patients have been positively impacted if their mothers have been able to continue with access and continue with coverage in those instances.”

The post Postpartum women never lost Medicaid coverage during the pandemic. But the state told them they did. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: The Plan appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today has partnered with WJTV to provide live streams and video of press conferences regarding Jackson’s water crisis. Below is a video of Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s Tuesday, September 6 press conference.

Watch:

The post Video: Latest on Jackson water crisis from Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba appeared first on Mississippi Today.

CLEVELAND — On the first day of school this year, seven of the eight school buildings in the district here didn’t have working air conditioning, leading multiple classes to be conducted simultaneously in the auditorium as parts of the building reached temperatures in the 80s.

The recent infrastructure problems have driven the community frustration in Cleveland into overdrive. Parents have been expressing their discontent with the school conditions and leadership for multiple years, a rift that parents say has grown since the consolidation of the district’s majority Black schools and historically white schools in 2017. 

Mississippi Today spoke to nearly a dozen parents and former employees who say this failure is the latest in a series of problems created by mismanagement and lack of communication. 

The district’s superintendent says he’s aware of the community’s complaints, but many of the problems are bigger than he alone can fix, and also questions whether others’ issues are racially motivated.

At a community meeting on Aug. 25, Superintendent Otha Belcher fielded questions from a heated crowd. Parents pressed him for solutions to the district’s infrastructure woes and ways to address the declining enrollment, problems Belcher said his team is actively working to address. Parents repeatedly said that they wanted “less talk and more action.” 

At the community meeting, Belcher said HVAC renovations have been on the books for months in the district’s plans to spend pandemic relief funds, but have been generally delayed by supply issues and became more urgent when several units quit completely. Portable units are currently in place in every classroom without air, according to Belcher. 

“It’s so embarrassing and it’s just such a stain on our town and community that we can’t even take an entire summer … to get this figured out and get children in our buildings with air conditioning and food,” said Todd Davis, president of the Bell Academy Booster Club. 

The air conditioning issues have also compounded problems for meals served by the schools. Child Nutrition Director Shenika Newsom said at the meeting that when the high school’s kitchen was without air conditioning they drove meals over in vans for a few days from the middle school, but regular cafeteria service has since resumed. She said supply chain issues will continue to cause meal substitutions and changes to menus. 

“This is not something we want to do, but something we have to do,” she said. 

Steven Chudy, a parent at the community meeting, called the HVAC renovations a waste of taxpayer dollars and compared them to “putting lipstick on a pig,” instead saying that the district should be focusing its efforts on building new facilities. 

“I’m getting blamed for something that happened 40 years ago,” Belcher told Mississippi Today, referencing the district’s long-running infrastructures woes. “Do we need new buildings? In my opinion that’s the largest issue, everyone wants new buildings, but that takes a lot of money.” 

Belcher said that while he agrees infrastructure is an issue, these problems exist across the Delta as the area sees population decline. 

“If people are leaving, that means children are leaving,” he said. “It’s not just aimed at the Cleveland School District, it’s everywhere.” 

While enrollment numbers are not yet available for the new school year, the Cleveland School District has seen a relatively steady decline in enrollment over the last 10 years according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education. The annual decline of about 3% is steeper than the statewide average but similar to other school districts in the Delta. 

The percent of teachers leaving the district was 11% higher than the state average, reaching 28% at the end of the 2020-21 school year. This was an increase from prior years when the percent of teachers leaving the district hovered between 20-24%. 

Multiple parents have questioned Belcher’s leadership in the district more broadly, an accusation that he says is racially motivated. 

“I have been called so many racial names, I’ve had three cars vandalized, I’ve had all these phone calls, people delivering things to my house, and I don’t ever say a word,” he said. “There is a lot going about racial stuff but I keep pushing through it because it’s not about me, it’s about the kids.” 

He added that no matter who serves in his position, he does not believe the community will see the change they are looking for without first coming together. 

Jennifer Adams Williams moved to Cleveland because her husband’s family is native to the area and said the district is “unlike anything she has ever seen.” 

Her older daughter, a student at Cleveland Central High School, had been a part of the STAR program, an academic enrichment program, in elementary and middle school but was disappointed to discover a lack of advanced classes at the high school to continue to be challenged. Williams also expressed frustration with the district for discontinuing the STAR program altogether. 

“To hear that they’ve taken it away, it’s like you’re working against your own self-interest,” she said. 

She took issue with the building conditions and meal issues as well, saying they would have already moved if not for her husband’s family and her daughter’s desire to graduate with her friends.

“We’re really trying to get things together because my hope is that our younger children don’t have to deal with what I’ve seen these children go through,” Williams said. 

Additional parents echoed this sentiment, saying their children have enjoyed the community at the high school but are concerned that they are not getting what they need to be adequately prepared for college. 

Christie Coker Tolbert said her major issue with the district was the unaddressed bullying.

“There’s supposed to be this huge no bullying, zero tolerance, but it seemed like if not every day then every other day (my daughter) was getting threats on her life,” Tolbert said. 

She said she was unhappy with the way the district handled the bullying incidents and how they notified her about it. Her daughter, now in third grade, has since left the district for private school.

Other parents told Mississippi Today they are dissatisfied with the care provided for their special needs children, both in terms of classroom instruction and handling of bullying. They raised concerns about what they say is a lack of communication from administrators and verbal bullying by students and teachers, to the point that their children were hiding from teachers in the building or didn’t know their teacher’s name to ask for help. 

Belcher said that there had not previously been a procedure to handle bullying before he arrived in the district, but that he felt the principals had successfully implemented the policy that was developed. According to the district’s online policy directory, there are two bullying policies, one adopted in June 2014 before the superintendent joined the district and one from July 2021.

When pressed about bullying against special needs students specifically, Belcher said he was not aware of any issues. 

 “We haven’t heard any of that,” he said. “Usually if there’s a complaint of that nature and the district hasn’t handled it, it goes directly to (the Mississippi Department of Education) because that parent will go to MDE quick. But I haven’t been informed of anyone that’s complaining. Again, if you know some names please give them to me so that we can contact them.” 

LaDonne Sterling, a parent in attendance at the community meeting, said she thinks pressure should be focused on the school board rather than the superintendent, but he should be working to make himself more visible in the community. 

“I think that he’s trying because I work in a district where the air conditioning is out,” she said. “Everybody is short staffed … Overall I wouldn’t know where to take my kids because things are happening everywhere.”

Clarification 9/6/22: This story has been updated to clarify when the district put a bullying policy in place.

The post Bullying allegations, no air conditioning: Why parents are frustrated with the Cleveland School District appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Exactly one week since tens of thousands lost running water in Mississippi’s capital city, officials on Monday announced they believe every Jackson resident has water once again.

“We have returned water pressure to the city,” Gov. Tate Reeves said in a press conference on Monday. “The tanks are full or filling. There are currently zero water tanks at low levels.”

City officials echoed that update in a citywide notice on Monday: “All of Jackson should now have pressure and most are now experiencing normal pressure.”

A state-issued boil water notice remains in effect, however, meaning that the water, while flowing, should still not be consumed.

“Health officials tell me that the pump is pumping cleaner water than we’ve seen in a long, long time,” Reeves said, adding that there is still much testing to come before it can be deemed safe to drink.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Rep. Bennie Thompson opens up about Jackson water crisis

One week ago, state officials took over operations at the city’s largest water distribution plant, which had failed after years of neglect and the Pearl River flooded in late August. When the plant failed, Jackson’s 160,000-plus residents experienced little or no water pressure, spurring a federal emergency declaration and major relief efforts.

While Monday’s news of normal system operation may bring some relief to Jacksonians, officials continue to warn that additional water system problems could occur at any time. Many of the aged water main lines in the city cannot withstand high pressure, and some pipes that are integral to the system are more than 100 years old.

Reeves said officials from the state will remain in place “for some time.”

“We know there could be more challenges … There may be more bad days in the future,” Reeves said. “This system broke over several years, and it would be inaccurate to claim it was solved in less than a week.”

Reeves continued: “We have, however, reached a place that people in Jackson can trust water will come out of the faucet, toilets will be flushed, and fires will be fought.”

As officials continue to work toward keeping the water system on line, state leaders are discussing long-term options to ensure the system will be repaired or replaced. Those deliberations almost certainly would require state legislative action.

Reeves on Monday said he did not anticipate calling a special legislative session in the foreseeable future, but he said he was willing to hear and consider plans.

READ MORE: These long-term ideas are being discussed by state leaders to address for Jackson water crisis

The images in this story are from Deep Indigo Collective, a visual storytelling resource supporting news outlets reporting on the local impacts of environmental threats and the climate crisis. As a 501(c)(3) organization, Deep Indigo is proud to produce original visual journalism on behalf of our editorial partners across the United States.

The post Water restored to all Jackson residents one week after system failure appeared first on Mississippi Today.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson joins Mississippi Today editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau to discuss his negotiations regarding the Jackson water crisis. Thompson, who represents much of Jackson, says the city needs to prove it can manage the water system moving forward, and he says he still hasn’t seen a city plan for the long-term.

READ MORE: Rep. Bennie Thompson: Treat Jackson fairly, but if it can’t run water system, let someone else

Jackson water crisis news — direct to your inbox.

Sign up for free

Sign up to receive a roundup of Mississippi news every weekday morning.

Processing…

Success! You’re on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn’t process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

The post Exclusive: Rep. Bennie Thompson opens up about Jackson water crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Dr. Alyssa Killebrew to talk about her life and incredible resilience in the face of crushing loss and grief and her work to help kids work past their trauma.

Dr. Killebrew knows about working past trauma. In December of 2021, Dr. Killebrew’s longtime husband Keath, a successful farmer, died in a plane crash in South America. This came after the couple had recently lost their unborn child due to COVID-19. You will be inspired by her incredible strength and positive outlook. She talks about her and Keath’s creation of a camp called SEK Intensives to honor their youngest daughter and help both adolescents and their parents deal with life’s challenges.

Dr. Killebrew is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (No. 54-946), a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor. In 2005, she earned a Master’s degree of Education (M.Ed.) in Community Counseling from Delta State University. In 2008, she obtained a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Clinical Psychology from Jackson State University and completed a residency at Valley Mental Health in Salt Lake City, Utah. She completed her post-doctoral year with the Mississippi Department of Corrections, where she was the Mental Health Director of the Youthful Offender Unit.

She started her Ridgeland, Mississippi-based private practice, Killebrew Psychological Services, LLC, in 2016, focusing her services primarily on mood disorders, PTSD, addiction and personality disorders. She specializes in Biofeedback, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Prolonged Exposure, and Modified Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

The post Mississippi Stories: Dr. Alyssa Killebrew appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The inability of Mississippi’s capital and largest city to produce safe drinking water, if any water at all, is not a good look for political leaders both on the state and local levels.

It would at least provide citizens a little reassurance to think their elected leaders were working together to solve the crisis. For the most part — but not always — city and state leaders have conveyed in recent days that they were.

When Gov. Tate Reeves announced in late August a state of emergency because of the failure of the Jackson water system, he tried to establish a sense of collaboration and of common goal shared by both the primarily African American Democratic leadership of the city and the primarily white Republican leadership of the state.

That has not always been the case. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has not shied away from using language like “paternalistic” and “racist” in describing how the state’s white power structure has dealt with Jackson. And Reeves has gone out of his way to criticize Democratic leaders, often Black leaders of large cities, using his own incendiary language.

But that rhetoric subsided for a time after Reeves issued the state of emergency last week.

“Those who want to drive division and those who want to try to focus this effort … there will be plenty of time for that. But what we are focused on right now is the immediate recovery from this emergency,” Reeves said. “We have a unified command center.”

For his part, Lumumba has praised the fact that the state was agreeing to help with both manpower and finances to repair a water system that he had been saying publicly for months was on the brink of failure.

Granted, separate press conference — the African American mayor surrounded by Black members of his administration, and the white governor flanked by white male leaders in state government — could be seen as a troublesome optic. It created images of the separate but equal old South.

But Lumumba himself shot down those comparisons.

“I’ve heard people say we’re having dueling press conferences,” Lumumba said. “That is not how I would characterize it.”

And later in the week, Lumumba and Reeves had a joint news conference.

“I believe my representation here is a symbol of the unity that is taking place — a symbol of the coalition that is working arm in arm to ensure we keep the most primary focus on the residents of Jackson,” the mayor said.

“As the governor said, there may be a time when other questions come forward, but right now what we are focused on is this unified effort.”

In a time of an embarrassing crisis, it can at least present a positive image of the state to see white and African American politicians, white and Black Mississippians working together to help people in need.

But remember this is Mississippi, and such cooperation can be tenuous or short-lived. Less than 24 hours after the joint news conference, Hunter Estes, Reeves’ communications director, put out a social media statement saying the mayor’s announcement of another joint news conference was wrong.

“We have not invited city politicians to these substantive state press conferences on our repairs, because they occur to provide honest information about the state’s work. We are investigating why they are releasing misinformation.” Even the governor jumped in on social media, to say, yes, “accurate importation is important.”

Perhaps a phone call instead of social media post would be a sensible way to conduct that investigation.

Regardless of Estes’ troll, for the most part both the mayor and governor have been conveying a sense of cooperation.

But the question — and it is perhaps the most important question surrounding this crisis — is whether that cooperation will continue once the immediate problem is solved. The ongoing effort to restore water pressure and quality is in reality putting a Band-Aid on a much bigger problem.

This is not the first time that Jacksonians have been beset with empty faucets. It happened most notably during the winter storm of 2021 and multiple other times in recent years.

The current problem was caused by flooding and the inability of the city to adequately staff its water treatment plants. But other issues, such as 1,500 miles of water pipes — some more than 100 years old — running throughout the city, create a much bigger problem. That problem, the mayor has said, will cost more than a $1 billion to fix.

It is hard to envision that fix happening without additional cooperation between city and state leaders and perhaps federal officials.

That cooperation is needed to prevent Mississippi from remaining a national laughingstock — one that cannot provide the basics to its citizens.

The post State, local cooperation on Jackson water crisis is the tumultuous yet vital road forward appeared first on Mississippi Today.