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In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

washingtonpost.com

21–30 of 209 posts

Re: In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

#21

Does anyone else feel like all of our institutions are crumbling in real time? And to the degree they still work is a product of momentum?

That was the most shocking thing to me when I visited the United States for the first time in my live last month, the road system is so incredibly poorly maintained and so incredibly poorly thought out. It all is incredibly expansive but not maintained.

That being said I only saw 3 (eastern) states, maybe it's different elsewhere.

Re: In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

#23

Does anyone else feel like all of our institutions are crumbling in real time? And to the degree they still work is a product of momentum?

No, it's sample bias. You only notice when institutions fail. You don't notice the thousands of bureaucratic processes that work exactly how they're supposed to.

Re: In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

#24
post #5

By all measures, this is due to the kind of neglect and mismanagement one would expect to see in an underdeveloped or war-torn country, not in a city inside a state that is part of the most powerful country on earth. And Jackson is the state's largest city and as well as its capital ! It must be so embarrassing for the politicians who have been running Mississippi. They've done a truly terrible, horrible job on this.

But Mississippi is one of the poorest states in that country.

Mississippi's GDP per capita is roughly between Spain's and Portugal's, so by global standards, the state is actually quite wealthy -- definitely wealthy enough to ensure everyone has drinking water in all its cities.

Re: In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a Southern thing. Alabama isn’t much better. It’s the worst place to have a child in the entire country. We have people without access to fresh water or sewer systems. We have people living in conditions worse than anything I ever saw in Haiti. And we keep voting to actively make it worse.

Wait till you find out about rural Alaska.

No post body was provided.

Re: In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

#27

It's not just Jackson, or the state of Mississippi. The US has overbuilt infrastructure since WW2. All of it was built on the assumption that infrastructure investment always leads to a massive expansion of the tax base and easily pays for itself, when in reality more and more of our investments have had a negative ROI. This is going to be the new normal for the US as many cities have continues to expand outward for…

Sometime in the 70s there was a reduction of federal funding and thus an expectation that the state could shoulder the costs of infrastructure. Combined with white flight that took potential tax base elsewhere, it became very difficult to support maintenance at this level. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/11498/under-the-surface...

Re: In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

#28

Does anyone else feel like all of our institutions are crumbling in real time? And to the degree they still work is a product of momentum?

Along with the raiding of coffers, because everyone feels like "I need to get mine." Overly generous tax breaks, bailouts, "cancelling debt," etc. etc.

[deleted]

Re: In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

#29
post #5

By all measures, this is due to the kind of neglect and mismanagement one would expect to see in an underdeveloped or war-torn country, not in a city inside a state that is part of the most powerful country on earth. And Jackson is the state's largest city and as well as its capital ! It must be so embarrassing for the politicians who have been running Mississippi. They've done a truly terrible, horrible job on this.

These are the people that have been running the city: - (D) Harvey Johnson Jr. [2009-2013] - (D) Chokwe Lumumba [2013-2014] - (D) Charles Tillman [2014] - (D) Tony Yarber [2014-2017] - (D) Chokwe Lumumba [2017-Present] From the article: > “No one is taking responsibility” for the crisis, she said. “You have the governor and the mayor blaming each other. They just keep going back and forth. Both of them knew the water…

From the NYT article it looks like the state legislature holds the purse strings on any federal funds that might help:

"the State of Mississippi received $75 million to upgrade drinking water systems across the state, with an additional $429 million coming available over the next five years. But that money is in the hands of the state Legislature, not Jackson officials."

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