What are the Limits of Handing Out Bottled Water to Solve a Water Crisis? Dems Afraid to Criticize Ineffective Jacksonville Mayor (or any other Black Politician) and Treat their Rolebot as a Rolemodel
/From [HERE] and [HERE] State officials said they had no clear end date for the water crisis here, as residents on Thursday endured another day of unreliable water running through their pipes.
Many of the city’s roughly 150,000 residents have had little to no water pressure in their taps since Monday, when flooding overwhelmed the main water-treatment plant. Officials had been preparing for a crisis after the plant’s main pumps failed in July and the city went under a boil-water notice.
Nevertheless, Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba assured residents at a press conference that the capital city had seen improvements in water pressure overnight, and the number of locations with water increased.
“We have seen steady improvements in the system,” he said. “There are individuals who did not have water pressure at all yesterday in which water pressure has returned, and the reports of the tanks is that there are steady gains being achieved each and every day.”
“In the middle of peak consumption, which is during the daytime hours, we’ve maintained steady (pressure),” he added. “At night is a moment that we look to have the greatest amount of recovery.”
Both the City of Jackson and the State of Mississippi declared states of emergency on Monday over problems at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Center worsened by Pearl River flooding this week. The treatment plant is designed to pump 50 million gallons a day for use in the capital city. Reporter Nick Judin reported earlier today that the Environmental Protection Agency had warned in a Mississippi Free Press interview several days ago that the facility’s systems were in danger of failing.
Gov. Tate Reeves said Monday that he is “sending a request for a federally declared disaster to support state and city emergencies.”
Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District Rep. Bennie Thompson said he supports the move to ask for federal assistance. “I hope the Federal government will be able to provide resources adequate and comprehensive enough to address the health and safety crisis facing the City of Jackson and surrounding communities,” he said on social media. “This situation requires immediate attention and cooperation from Federal, state, and local governments.”
The 3rd Congressional District Rep. Michael Guest blamed “decades of failed leadership.”
“The problems in Jackson were many years in the making, and it will take many more years to fix them,” he wrote Tuesday. “The solutions will only be found by elected officials working together to fix the underlying issues, not playing politics or just merely throwing money at the problems.”
The mayor today welcomed the cooperation of the State of Mississippi in resolving various historic problems in the water system, and denied Reeves’ warning at his press conference last night that the City is distributing untreated water.
Reeves’ exact words were: “Please stay safe. Do not drink the water. In too many cases, it is raw water from the reservoir being pushed through the pipes.”
Gov. Tate Reeves (pictured) said on Aug. 29, 2022, that Jackson is pumping raw water into its water system. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba denied that assertion on Aug. 30, 2022. Photo courtesy State of Mississippi
“I do want to clarify just a few inaccuracies that have gone forward; first and foremost, the City of Jackson has not distributed any untreated raw water,” Lumumba said today. “That is inaccurate, but we do encourage our residents to continue to abide by the boil-water notice that has been in effect.”
The capital city has been under a boil-water notice for a month because of problems with water-treatment methods at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Center and related issues.
Lumumba said Monday that operators had stopped pushing the water into the system to ensure adequate treatment because of the Pearl River flood water coming into the system at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant. The City wanted to increase production at the J.H. Fewell Water Treatment Center, which generally supplies 20 million gallons daily into the system. However, a pump failed there, making it unable to do so.
However, Carol Kemker, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, told the Mississippi Free Press in an Aug. 26 interview that the facility’s system were likely to fail, in no small part due to the Lumumba administration dragging its feet on efforts to recruit qualified water operators.
“They could be reaching out to technical colleges, they could be holding recruitment events, they could be scheduling interviews, they could be putting in advertisements,” Kemker told Nick Judin. “(This is) what we do when we recruit. We’re not seeing those types of things.”
The mayor said today that the O.B. Curtis Water facility is suffering from numerous equipment failures. “This is a set of accumulated problems based on deferred maintenance that has not taken place over decades,” he said at the press conference. [MORE]]