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In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis of unparalleled scale

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

#91

Post by koheripbal »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #59
boeingUH60 wrote: post #45

Where I reside..what you’ll call a third-world country (Nigeria), everyone who builds a home digs their personal water borehole and sewage system because our government is too incompetent to maintain city-wide infrastructure. I’ve always thought it would be much better if we can get centralized systems for these things as they do in developed countries, but I’m pretty sure this is the type of thing we would see regul…

Public infrastructure needs quite a lot of work to make it work and care about it. You need a constant stream of engineers, technicians, materials, money, etc. And quite a lot of coordination. So even a first world country can fuck it all up and you wouldn't need a spectacular failure, just a bit of time, and a bit of willingness/resources shortage too. You can build a more, say, resilient infrastructure, but I don't…

Part of the problem is that engineers have all moved out of these cities.

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

#92

Post by mattmcknight »

yardie wrote: post #64
sokoloff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a city water department that has failed, not a state facility. Those in charge should be ashamed, indeed, but that shame is at a city level as far as I can tell.

The city of Flint, MI didn't have a water problem until the governor took control of the budget, appointed a special administrator, who promptly switched that city over to a polluted water source.

Actually, Detroit cut them off before the new source was ready to come online.

"The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department sends Flint a letter terminating their water service contract, effective in 12 months, or April 2014, which means Flint must find an alternative source of water until the Karegnondi construction is completed" [1]

In addition, the water was not polluted. When they switched to the Flint River source, they failed to add corrosion controls, so the accumulated corrosion in Flint's existing lead pipes quickly dissolved, allowing lead from the pipes to seep into the water.

[1] https://www.freep.com/pages/interactives/flint-water-crisis-...

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

#93

Post by yibg »

nostrademons wrote: post #61
peterpost2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It all depends how many rich people live in the city. You can tell when you cross city/town borders because the roads become noticeably better or worse.

I think the road systems are pretty badly designed pretty much everywhere.

Cross walks that cross 3 lanes (each side)with traffic going 40mph and no signal.

Stop signs that doesn't tell you if the intersecting direction stops or not.

Half-assed painted gutters for bike lanes.

Places with 4 signs to indicate when you can park, each with different (sometimes overlapping) times and conditions.

the list goes on.

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

#94

Post by afterburner »

parkingrift wrote: post #68
cs702 wrote: 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.

Urban decay. Maybe the state will step in to save Jackson, but maybe not. There isn’t a quick fix to reverse the situation in Jackson. Even with dedicated funding and committed resources it would be a multi-decade effort to save the city. The state government may just let the city rot away and disappear.

> Urban decay

Aka "the white people moved out of the town and the rest of the state doesn't care about it now"

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

#96

Post by hotpotamus »

dirtsoc wrote: post #66
scifibestfi wrote: post #14

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?

Who wants to work on public infrastructure when you can be a software engineer making 6 figures after a single 3 month long bootcamp.

Which is society's fault because... It can't be mine, I'm a great software engineer creating great value through my innovation. My dog massage scheduling app is valued at 10 figures.

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

#97

Post by arrosenberg »

bradleyjg wrote: post #47
jamroom wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> on any federal funds that might help Why do they have to be federal funds? Mississippi is a poor state within the US but if you look at global comparisons it has a robust tax base. There’s no reason it needs to depend on federal largesse for the basics. It just needs better governance.

Mississippi was the most confederate of the Confederate states. Jefferson Davis was their Senator and then President of the Confederacy. After the civil war and the end of reconstruction, it was a hotbed of reactionary violence. There maybe a robust tax base, but you have to ignore the entire history of the state (which is majority white) and city (which is majority black and the descendants of slaves). I'm not as familiar with MS, but there is a great video on how this works in Lousiana - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38

Historically (back to reconstruction), the Federal government is the guarantor of Black rights in the South and they provide significant funds to the majority black/liberal cities to make up for the fact that the state governments do not provide. Generally the state government is funneling money out of these areas.

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

#98

Post by zdragnar »

thro388 wrote: post #75
boeingUH60 wrote: post #45

Where I reside..what you’ll call a third-world country (Nigeria), everyone who builds a home digs their personal water borehole and sewage system because our government is too incompetent to maintain city-wide infrastructure. I’ve always thought it would be much better if we can get centralized systems for these things as they do in developed countries, but I’m pretty sure this is the type of thing we would see regul…

In Lagos (capital) there were public toilets, and public water taps, and mobile cisterns with drinkable water even in slums. Goverment is not going to risk outbreak of cholera! I live in Central Europe, private wells and septics are pretty common here in smaller villages.

Even in the US, private wells and septic systems are common outside of cities and smaller towns.

My parents have their own in a village of around 3000 people, but they're on the border and people closer to the center are on a municipal system.

The levels of government, in order from largest to smallest, are roughly as follows:

Federal

State

County

Municipality (city, township, or unincorporated) (names for these vary by state).

If you live in an unincorporated area (basically, rural space between cities or suburbs) or a town, you will need your own well and septic system.

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

#99

Post by Mountain_Skies »

systemvoltage wrote: post #12
cs702 wrote: 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…

And none of them will be held responsible. Why? Just look around this thread where the (D) behind the name and the color of their skin is protection against it. There's a algorithm for assigning responsibility: start at the lowest level connected to the problem and if the people in charge are from your favored party, you climb up one level of government. Repeat this process as many times as needed until you find someone from the other party, then that's the person responsible.

Also notice how much soft bigotry this thread is seeped in, with quite a few treating the leaders of Jackson like low IQ children who can't be held responsible for their actions. Maybe the problem isn't that they're morons like so many apologists here think but maybe they're actually somewhat smart and just crooked or incompetent. Yes, even smart people can do bad things and they're also quite capable of making errors, sometimes very large errors.

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

#100

Post by boeingUH60 »

thro388 wrote: post #75
boeingUH60 wrote: post #45

Where I reside..what you’ll call a third-world country (Nigeria), everyone who builds a home digs their personal water borehole and sewage system because our government is too incompetent to maintain city-wide infrastructure. I’ve always thought it would be much better if we can get centralized systems for these things as they do in developed countries, but I’m pretty sure this is the type of thing we would see regul…

In Lagos (capital) there were public toilets, and public water taps, and mobile cisterns with drinkable water even in slums. Goverment is not going to risk outbreak of cholera! I live in Central Europe, private wells and septics are pretty common here in smaller villages.

Just a slight correction. Abuja is the capital, not Lagos.

And I’ve been to Lagos several times, and gosh, do I hate that overcrowded state with stretched-out infrastructure.

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