Days after an emergency was declared over Jackson’s water system, Hinds County’s youth detention center located in the city is getting by with bottled water for drinking and water brought in to flush toilets.
“I don’t think we’re having problems at this time at Henley-Young,” Board of Supervisors President Credell Calhoun said Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t think it has gotten that bad, maybe it was for a short while.”
The Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center houses boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 17 who have been accused of a misdemeanor or felony. It is also a temporary place for those awaiting a hearing, placement in another youth facility or transfer to another jurisdiction or agency, according to the facility’s page on the Hinds County website.
The facility has a capacity of 84 beds, but Calhoun said it has been operating at a reduced capacity and about 30 juveniles are currently there.
Henley-Young Interim Executive Director Marshand Crisler said Wednesday morning the water situation at the facility is fine, but he didn’t provide details and referred comment to County Administrator Kenny Wayne Jones. Jones declined to comment through a staff member.
District 5 Supervisor Bobby McGowan, whose district includes Henley-Young, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Hinds County Detention Center and Work Center, which serve adults, are located in Raymond and are not experiencing impacts from Jackson’s water crisis. Sheriff Tyree Jones said Monday the facilities, which are part of Raymond’s water system, have full water capacity and detainees have access to water.
Henley-Young is not under the purview of the sheriff’s office.
Hinds County is looking to build a new jail to house adult detainees next to Henley-Young in Jackson. Calhoun said it is a way to come into compliance with issues identified by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Part of that plan is to build a water tower and pump that would hook into Jackson’s water system.
“It should be able to help alleviate low water pressure in South Jackson,” Calhoun said.
The county has not begun construction on the jail yet, he said, but now that a land disposition and lease have been completed, the board of supervisors can make plans when to break ground.
Thousands of Jacksonians with kidney failure rely on clean water to power the dialysis treatments that keep them alive. As the city’s water system collapses, dialysis providers have brought in tanker trucks full of water to ensure patients don’t have to miss their treatment.
Lack of access to clean water also creates risks for patients who perform their dialysis treatments at home– and puts kidney patients at greater danger of health consequences from impure water.
On Tuesday afternoon, Derek Whitaker pulled into the parking lot of the Jackson Medical Mall, towing a 6,000 gallon tank full of water from Broussard, Louisiana. A tanker truck from Missouri was already hooked up to a pump that was delivering water into the mall, which houses a dialysis unit.
Whitaker, who works with the disaster response company Macro, has traveled the country providing relief after hurricanes and tornadoes. Now, he and at least two colleagues have come to Jackson to deliver life’s most basic necessity – and one that is even more essential for people with kidney failure.
One dialysis nurse told Mississippi Today that about six weeks ago, her clinic brought in a tanker truck full of water because of pressure fluctuations. The dialysis process requires about 10 gallons a minute, she said. The clinic first needed to use the tanker truck about two weeks ago.
“They need this in order to live,” said the nurse, who requested not to be identified by name because she was not authorized to speak to the media. “And they would not live more than—some people a few days, some a week without dialysis … to have a city that doesn’t have water is just unconscionable to me. I don’t understand how it ever got to that.”
Mississippi has one of the country’s highest rates of kidney failure. More than 9,000 Mississippians are living with end-stage kidney disease, meaning their kidneys have essentially stopped functioning. Black Americans are roughly three times likelier than white Americans to develop kidney failure.
In Jackson, the rate of kidney disease is 26% higher than the national average, according to the Mississippi Kidney Foundation. And Mississippians have the highest mortality rate from chronic kidney disease of any state in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dialysis is a medical procedure that acts as an artificial kidney. The patient’s blood is diverted into a machine where it passes through membranes that remove waste before returning it to the body. Patients can do dialysis at home after they have been trained in the process, or visit a clinic or hospital three times a week for about four hours.
A reliable water source is generally essential for dialysis, which can require 300 to 600 liters of ultra-clean water during a single week. The filtration systems clean the water – ordinary tap water isn’t clean enough for the process – but if the local water source isn’t producing water quickly enough, the process can’t work.
According to the health department, no dialysis centers in Jackson have had to close as of Wednesday. But almost all of them have had to make costly adjustments to continue operating. On Tuesday afternoon, officials said it still wasn’t clear when Jackson will have clean, abundant drinking water.
Fresenius Medical Care, the largest dialysis company in the city with four Jackson locations providing in-center treatment, said it had brought in tanker trucks for three of their facilities. At its southwest Jackson location, the truck has been in place for about a month or longer because of issues with water quality and pressure, said Richi Lesley, Mississippi regional vice president.
“It comes at a great expense,” he said. “The resources of getting a tanker truck in place, getting the tanker truck filled, having them on-site for the hours to set and support – when you do think about in terms of how many shifts we’re operating at each of the facilities and each individual patient shift is normally around four hours, so it’s a lot of water.”
Lesley declined to specify how much each truck costs the company.
“If we gave the number, I think a lot of people would be running out trying to get in the tanker truck business,” he said.
The north Jackson Fresenius location still has water, he added, but a tanker truck is in position in case that changes.
A fourth Fresenius facility located inside St. Dominic Memorial Hospital uses the hospital’s independent water system.
Fresenius serves 500 to 600 patients in Jackson, Lesley said.
DaVita, Inc. operates three Jackson locations, two of which have been affected by the water crisis, said Chris Price, division vice president at DaVita, who oversees Mississippi operations. The company implemented “emergency water solutions” on Tuesday morning.
“These solutions include water from sources outside of Jackson that will remain subject to our full treatment and quality testing procedures,” Price said. “We will keep these emergency measures in place until confidence in the reliability of city water sources is restored.”
The water crisis also threatens Jacksonians’ ability to safely access dialysis at home because that process requires careful attention to hygiene, said TJ Mayfield, executive director of the Mississippi Kidney Foundation. Mayfield is a former dialysis patient who received a kidney transplant in 2019.
“If you don’t have water to flush, if you don’t have water to drain out your dialysis that you’re doing overnight or home dialysis, how do you clean it properly?” Mayfield said. “How do you make sure you wash your hands properly so that you don’t catch an infection? All of that plays a large factor into home dialysis.”
Mayfield said clean drinking water is critical for people with kidney conditions — and to ensure healthy people don’t develop kidney issues. When clean drinking water isn’t available or costs the same as soda, he pointed out, people are likelier to choose sugary drinks. He is working to distribute bottled water to dialysis patients in Jackson.
Valerie Bailey, a nurse practitioner with more than a decade of experience working with kidney patients in Jackson, said people with kidney issues are also more vulnerable to health problems from unclean water.
“Any renal patient has to be extremely diligent about keeping up with their fluid intake, because their kidneys are unable to properly filter out excess fluids,” Bailey said. “If they do not have clean water, then their body, their kidneys are not going to be able to filter out those impurities in the contaminated water, like a normally functioning kidney might be able to.”
Dialysis providers who spoke with Mississippi Today said they are experienced in disaster response, not only because industry standards require it, but also because Jackson has seen this before.
During the 2021 ice storm that crippled the city’s water system, Fresenius worked with Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) to ensure tanker trucks full of water could reach their clinics.
Whitaker, who came to the Medical Mall from Louisiana with the water tanker, drove around southern Louisiana after Hurricane Ida and to Kentucky after the devastating tornadoes earlier this year. The combat veteran often carries fuel to help people power generators after losing power.
“We kind of get out and see the countryside a little bit when there’s a disaster,” he said. He didn’t think much about the nature of the disaster — long-running and manmade — that had brought him to the mall parking lot.
“To me, it’s my job,” he said.
Whitaker said he doesn’t know how long he will be in Jackson. He’ll sleep in his truck and shower at the facility where he will refill the tanker, somewhere outside of town.
Mississippi Today has partnered with WJTV to provide live streams and videos of press conferences regarding Jackson’s water crisis. Gov. Tate Reeves provided an update at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.
WASHINGTON — La Agencia Federal para el Manejo de Emergencias (FEMA, por sus siglas en inglés) anunció que asistencia federal está disponible para el estado de Mississippi para complementar los esfuerzos de respuesta estatales debido a las condiciones de emergencia por la crisis de agua que comenzaron el 30 de agosto, y continúan.
La acción del presidente autoriza a FEMA a coordinar todas las labores de ayuda por desastre que tienen el propósito de aliviar la severidad y el sufrimiento causados por la emergencia en la población local y proporcionar la asistencia adecuada para las medidas de emergencia requeridas, a fin de salvar vidas, proteger la propiedad, seguridad y salud pública, y para minimizar o prevenir la amenaza de una catástrofe en el condado Hinds.
De manera específica, FEMA tiene la autorización para identificar, movilizar y proporcionar a su discreción los equipos y recursos necesarios para disminuir los efectos de la emergencia. Las medidas de protección de emergencia, incluida la asistencia federal directa como parte del programa de Asistencia Pública, se proporcionarán durante un período de 90 días.
Allan Jarvis ha sido nombrado Coordinador Federal a cargo de las operaciones federales de respuesta en el área afectada.
Mississippi Today has partnered with WJTV to provide live streams and videos of press conferences regarding Jackson’s water crisis. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba spoke to media at 3 p.m. Wednesday.
Mississippi Today’s data and environment reporter Alex Rozier talked with Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd about recent developments in the Jackson water crisis that have left thousands with little to no drinking water. Find our full coverage here.
Listen to the episode:
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One month before the city of Jackson water system began failing, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assessment team flagged numerous system problems in a July 2022 report.
The report, obtained by Mississippi Today, documents a litany of problems contributing to the capital city’s long-running and ongoing water crisis, which threatens the health and livelihoods of its residents.
The report was written following the latest independent assessment of Jackson’s water system and was compiled jointly with the EPA and Mississippi State Department of Health. The state Department of Health is tasked with enforcing EPA safe water regulations.
For several years, the EPA has documented many problems with the Jackson water system and has entered into several binding legal agreements with the city to improve the system’s safety and reliability. Since then, federal assessment teams have checked in on the system to determine whether the city is complying with the federal agreements.
In an April 2020 emergency order, the EPA found that the Jackson water system “presented an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of persons served by the system.”
A 2021 agreement between the EPA and city of Jackson sought to correct the problems with the quality of the water. But this summer, amid continuous boil water notices and culminating with the governor issuing the state of emergency this week to try to address problems with the capital city’s water system, indications are the improvements outlined in the agreement have not been achieved.
The problems highlighted in the July 2022 report include:
Poor administration, lack of staff
The report notes the utilities manager position was vacant, which the city said was because of budget limitations. The system has no succession plan for management.
There are insufficient operators to consistently staff three shifts, seven days a week, and staff are unable to take time off without forcing remaining staff to work extra hours. Supervisors are working shifts in addition to their management responsibilities and lack of distribution system workers doesn’t allow for preventive maintenance.
Operator turnover is high, with some reporting working 75 hours a week without overtime pay.
Finances are in shambles
The report said the city was unable to provide a complete list of customers when inspectors visited, and explained that some customers receive no bills, while others receive large bills. The city could not calculate its collection rate, and said this issue isn’t expected to be resolved until late 2024.
The report said malfunctioning water meters have contributed to a 32-percent decrease in revenue. In March, the report said, the city reported 14,000 bills were “stranded,” or not sent to or received by customers. The city reported that about 50% of the water put out is “non-revenue,” and that it is unclear how much is due to meter issues or water loss.
Customer complaints
Data from 2011 through 2022 shows discolored water complaints have been reduced in recent years, but there has been an increase in pressure complaints since 2014 and odor complaints since 2016.
Lack of routine monitoring and maintenance
In part due to lack of staff, the report says, the city fails to collect and record continuous pressure data, which could identify problems spots and prevent contamination in the system. Routine flushing of the system is not performed and valves and hydrants are not maintained.
Water in storage tanks isn’t cycled
The report says water hasn’t been cycled in and out of tanks frequently to maintain adequate chlorine levels. The report said that the Maddox and Spring Hill tanks “were not evaluated because the tank levels never change (i.e. water was not draining from or filling the tanks). The Byram water tank, the report said, “has never filled as expected,” likely because a bottling plant near the tank increased demand.
Frequent line breaks
The report said that from 2017 through 2021, the system saw average annual line breaks of 55 per 100 miles of line — far exceeding the 15 breaks per 100 miles a year that is considered safe. The study showed some areas, such as the North Jackson and Seneca Street areas have extremely high frequency of line breaks because they still use aged, small diameter cast-iron pipe.
The July 2022 report says the EPA, using federal pandemic stimulus money, has contracted with the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina to assess the financial status and operations of Jackson’s water system. The EPA report said the assessment team will consider whether it would be better for the system to be governed by an entity other than the Jackson City Council “to determine whether another model would be successful.”
Discussions about whether the city is equipped to continue to manage its water system are ongoing at the Mississippi State Capitol.
At a Tuesday afternoon news conference, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said the city has been trying to follow the recommendations of the EPA. Responding to questions Tuesday from Mississippi Free Press reporter Nick Judin, who wrote about EPA concerns with the city’s recruitment of water system managers, the mayor said several steps have been taken to find additional operators for the city’s water treatment system.
Those efforts, the mayor said, having included trying to recruit people who can earn their certification as an operator, trying to contract with a third party to provide operators, entering into a national association that could provide help and bringing back retired operators on a part-time basis.
“We have committed every dollar we could find to resolve this problem,” Lumumba said.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced late Tuesday night that President Joe Biden had approved an emergency declaration for the Jackson water crisis.
The drinking water system in Jackson — Mississippi’s largest city and home to more than 160,000 residents — is failing, state officials announced on Monday. Thousands of Jackson residents have no or little water pressure, and officials cannot say when adequate, reliable service will be restored.
Biden’s emergency declaration will scramble federal resources to assist local and state officials. Emergency protective measures, the White House said, will be provided at 75% federal funding for a period of 90 days.
“The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population,” a White House press release said.
Biden’s decision will “provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures … to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in Hinds County.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Jean-Pierre said that President Biden had been briefed on the Jackson water crisis situation.
Tractor-trailer loads of bottled water are rolling in, the state is rounding up some private contractors and a rented emergency pump should be running by Wednesday morning, but Gov. Tate Reeves said he can’t say when Mississippi’s capital city will have clean, plentiful drinking water on tap again.
“After the briefing I just received, things are not significantly worse today than they were yesterday,” Reeves said Tuesday afternoon after meetings at the city’s O.B. Curtis treatment plant and talking with Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. “They’re not significantly better, but we are seeing some progress and have some plans in place to see some more progress.”
The state, city and Mississippi’s health department all declared states of emergency Tuesday and Reeves called on President Joe Biden to declare a federal one after announcements Monday that Jackson’s main water treatment plan was failing — again — after decades of neglected maintenance and recent flooding from the Pearl River.
Thousands of homes and businesses in the capital city have little or no running water, and that after a month of residents being warned to boil it before drinking and years of warning that it contains harmful contaminants.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, health department and even National Guard are mobilizing to help with the issue. Reeves said the focus right now is getting drinking and non-potable water to residents and makeshift repairs to the plant. He vowed to work with the city and state lawmakers after to find more permanent solutions, but wouldn’t speculate what those might be. The current crisis — after a near citywide outage for weeks in 2021 after winter storms — has renewed calls for state intervention or even a take-over of the system.
Reeves and Craig said that as fixes are made at the plant, there is concern other things will break because of neglected maintenance — and the plant lacks “redundancy” and staff.
Reeves said Tuesday it was impossible to say how many of the roughly 160,000 people served by the system are without water — that it depends on how close one is to a water tank, elevation and numerous other factors. But Jim Craig, director of health protection for the state health department, said that the O.B. Curtis plant, rated for 50 million gallons of water a day, on Tuesday was only pushing about 30 million gallons. But, he said, some headway was made in filling water tanks to increase pressure. Officials said that of 10 tanks on the system, about half are at extremely low levels.
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While he would not speak to long-term solutions, Reeves said that in addition to Lumumba, he also spoke with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, House Speaker Philip Gunn and members of the city’s legislative delegation and vowed to work with them on long-term fixes once the current crisis is in hand. Lumumba in a presser earlier Tuesday said the city has struggled “alone” for years with infrastructure issues and “we are excited to finally welcome the state to the table.”
This would appear to be progress in what has been an icy relationship between the majority Black, majority Democratic capital city and the white Republican state leadership that runs most of state government from Jackson.
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Director Stephen McCraney at the O.B. Curtis briefing said the state’s emergency team had been checking on 71 care facilities across the city making sure patients were OK and worked to secure drinking and non-potable water and water for firefighting. He said 10 tractor trailer loads of drinking water arrived Tuesday, and 108 more truckloads are en route. He said that by Thursday at noon, there will be seven “mega distribution sites” set up citywide that will be able to distribute 36 truckloads of water a day.
McCraney said Anheuser-Busch, Walmart, Sav-A-lot and other companies are donating water and that volunteer organizations are offering help. Those who want to help can email memainfo@mema.ms.gov for more information.
Reeves was questioned by press at the briefing about conflicting city and state statements or info, including Reeves’ statement Monday night that “raw” water from the Ross Barnett Reservoir had been pumped through the drinking water system. At his presser earlier Tuesday, Lumumba said this was inaccurate.
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Craig said, “There was water that was not optimally treated, is probably a more accurate way to put it.”
Reeves said, “Sometimes the answer is both-and, rather than either-or … It was somewhere between raw and not clean — which is not ideal.”
Reeves reiterated to Jacksonians: “Do not drink the water. To be clear, do not drink the water at this time.”
Craig clarified that people can drink the water after boiling it (the health department recommends a rolling boil of at least one minute), but should not consume it without boiling. He said it’s OK to bathe in it, but “don’t open your mouth while you’re in the shower,” and be especially careful that infants and those with compromised immune system don’t consume un-boiled water.
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The drinking water system in Jackson — Mississippi’s largest city and home to more than 160,000 residents — is failing, state officials announced on Monday. Thousands of Jackson residents already have no or little water pressure, and officials cannot say when adequate, reliable service will be restored.
The city water system has been plagued with problems for years, including tens of thousands of residents losing water between one and three weeks during a 2021 winter storm.
At a press conference Monday night, Gov. Tate Reeves said the city’s largest water treatment plants may be completely down.
“The O.B. Curtis plant is not operating anywhere near full capacity,” Reeves said. “We may find out tomorrow it’s not operating at all. We’ll have better visibility on that when we get in there tomorrow.”
Reeves announced he would sign an emergency declaration for the capital city’s water system and create an “incident command center” to distribute water to the city’s residents beginning Tuesday morning.
“Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale,” Reeves said. “It means the city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs.”
When Reeves announced the system was failing Monday at 7 p.m., Jackson leaders, including Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, had not addressed the public about the failure of the water system. Lumumba did declare a “water system emergency” Monday around 6 p.m., saying in a statement the “water shortage is likely to last the next couple of days.”
Lumumba was not invited by Reeves to attend the Monday evening press conference. While Reeves said he had not spoken directly with the mayor, he did say the city leader had agreed to work with state officials to address the problem. Employees with the Mississippi State Department of Health will be working Tuesday with city operators to try to get the plant back on line.
“The operators (of the O.B. Curtis facility) have been heroic, just not enough of them,” Reeves said, adding the city employees will be crucial to get the plant running again.
State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney urged Jackson residents to “husband their water resources,” and to boil their water for three minutes before using it to drink, brush teeth, or cook.
Reeves revealed that he became aware of the possibility that O.B. Curtis could fail completely on Friday. State health officials told him that the city was relying on backup pumps because the main pumps had been “damaged severely” around the time the current boil water notice went into place on July 29.
“We were told on Friday that there was no way to predict exactly when, but that it was a near certainty that Jackson would begin to fail to produce running water sometime in the next several weeks or months if something didn’t materially improve,” Reeves said. “We began preparing for a scenario where Jackson would be without running water for an extended period.”
The governor said his team began coming up with a water distribution plan over the weekend.
“All of this was with the prayer that we would have more time before their system ran to failure,” Reeves said. “Unfortunately that failure appears to have begun today.”
On Tuesday, an incident command center will be set up and state employees will go into the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant to try to restore it to full operation. The plant has been operating at partial capacity for a number of days, Reeves said. For more than a month, the city has been under a state health department-issued boil water notice, but on Monday because of the problems with the plant much of Jackson lost water pressure.
Reeves said the first goal is to restore water quantity so that people can flush toilets and take a shower and then to restore quality to end the boil water notice.
As a short-term plan, Reeves said the state will cashflow emergency improvements, maintenance and repairs, which will include contracting operators to assist at the treatment plant. He said Mayor Lumumba agreed to a plan where the city would be responsible for half of the cost of the operation.
“We will come up with a solution that will be great for the city of Jackson,” said Mississippi Emergency Management Agency executive director Stephen McCraney. The governor, though, did not address long-term plans involving possible legislation to earmark state funds to provide a long-term fix for the troubled water system.
McCraney added that Hinds County Emergency Management Agency had secured water for potential firefighting needs and that the state would be bringing in both water for drinking and for other sanitary needs.
He said it is not unlike what MEMA, in conjunction with the National Guard and other agencies, do after hurricanes. But as of Monday night, the governor had not activated the National Guard to assist the Jackson crisis.
“It is a massive undertaking,” McCraney said, adding “the state of Mississippi is good at distribution.”
Water will first be available at fire stations in town.
O.B. Curtis is supposed to provide about 50 million gallons for the city daily while Fewell, the other main treatment plant, provides 20 million. Fewell has been ramped up to provide 30 million.
Reeves said it is not clear how much of Jackson is completely without water.
The announcement comes after weekend Pearl River flooding caused some businesses and schools to close Monday and prompted some leaders to call for the state to take action on the city water system.
Jackson Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in the state, announced Monday night that it would switch to virtual learning “indefinitely” due to water shortages. Jackson State University announced Monday night it would hold classes virtually for the remainder of the week, adding that water will be delivered to all residential halls and temporary restrooms will be available to students and faculty beginning Tuesday morning.
