Water crisis in Mississippi Worsens

A recent climate change hit Southern U.S. harshly, especially along the Mississippi River and states bordering it, ironically leading to heavy rainfalls and floods but also leading to a shortage of drinking water.

The city of Jackson in Mississippi has been severely damaged by the heavy floods that led to the malfunctioning of the water treatment plant and lowered water pump system. As of August 31, most of the city’s 150,000 residents were out of safe water to drink, wash, and flush. The Mississippi Governor, Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency. He warned that there wasn’t enough running water “to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets and to meet other critical needs,” and ” It’s not clear when the city will have safe drinking water again,”.

The population of the city of Jackson is more than 80% black and they are living below the national poverty line. Thus, there is not much revenue for reviving these failed infrastructures.  Some elementary school students in this region go to another school due to a lack of water supply for the student’s basic needs.

Mississippi Department of Health posted on its Twitter account saying that “Jackson water is at risk for contamination. For safety, disinfect water by bringing it to a rolling boil for at least a minute, and using it when it cools for drinking, cooking, baby formula, and brushing teeth.”

The freshwater flood contains lots of unwanted blockages for the filtering system and it leads to slower flow into the water treatment system. Recent torrential rain in August flooded Mississippi’s Pearl River and Ross R. Barnett Reservoir providing the city of Jackson with bottleneck conditions. This contaminated water from the flood is not easy to treat with chemicals, and it takes a long time to get this done right.

Until then the Jackson residents have to boil water for more than 1 minute for their basic needs or wait in line to get some bottled water, that which is also seeing a shortage in supplies.