51–60 of 79 posts
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indefinitely is a bit extreme. it should say "until pumps are fixed and service is restored"
When will the pumps be fixed and service be restored? Oh, an unknown or unstated length of time? There must be a word for that...
https://www.newsweek.com/jackson-water-crisis-live-updates-1...
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The mayor has been begging* for funds from the state for a long time now to fix the problem though. That being said, I'm sure there is lots of local and state mismanagement that would go into causing such an embarrassment. * https://www.wlbt.com/2022/02/17/jackson-faces-uphill-battle-...
So, instead of an appropriate local bonding ballot initiative (or whatever) to fund this like every other city does, they just throw up their hands and ask for state handouts? Maybe they are worried about the political implications of rising property taxes or water bills? Seems like a HUGE failure by an inept local government.
The article i link says they’re getting ~10B from the feds so they’d need add a 15% tax rate on their 3M people earning avg of 25K to pay for that. On top of the 5% they have. Thank god for them 25K income is so low that they only pay federal tax rate of ~12%.
Maybe a poor state that voted against handouts and critiques others from getting outside funding should pay their own way?
Or maybe they’re too poor and need help from the rest of society and we should help them because it’s a kind human thing to do, and not judge them for their poor financial decisions.
https://mspolicy.org/mississippi-no-longer-the-state-most-re...
They've got no water in one of the largest cities, but those state officials are definitely on top of making sure that those uppity females have no access to reproductive healthcare, and that city is mostly not white people -- they've got their priorities to take care of! Meanwhile, it looks like some federal intervention, e.g., Army Corp of Engineers is likely needed. More seriously, this is what we get when politic…
Are you seriously saying that people in Jackson are not capable to taking care of themselves? And they need the state to do it for them?
https://mspolicy.org/mississippi-no-longer-the-state-most-re...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, instead of an appropriate local bonding ballot initiative (or whatever) to fund this like every other city does, they just throw up their hands and ask for state handouts? Maybe they are worried about the political implications of rising property taxes or water bills? Seems like a HUGE failure by an inept local government.
do you know anything about jackson's local government, local tax base, the dynamics of power, the surrounding wealthy suburbs, or the extent of how much a repair like this would cost? here's a primer: - https://mississippitoday.org/2021/11/08/jackson-water-crisis... - https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/24/why-jacksons-water-s... - https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-mississippi-citys-...
If you want to argue something else then please explain why local gov't even exists in the first place.
This is a primarily a failure of local government likely due to weak/inept leadership. Just because something like fixing your water supply is politically difficult or expensive doesn't mean you can ignore it.
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Its kinda bonkers that golf courses and grass lawns are things allowed to thrive in areas of the US where they are not naturally occurring. I also think its kinda crazy that humans have brought agriculture to a desert via irrigation and think that's sustainable. This is the type of thing where Federal laws/rulings are needed because there are like 4 states over consuming the water.
Irrigation agriculture has been a primary source of life in places like Arizona for millennia. Reducing it down to "irrigation is unsustainable" is both incorrect and unproductive. It can be made sustainable, as long as we understand the system and respect appropriate limits within that. It's likely those changes will need to be larger than anyone wants, but they're still possible in a less dramatic way than "everyon…
Millennia? Do you have any references for this?
AFAIK the natives did not do large scale irrigation, I'll be interested to know if that was the case.
Further, my understanding is that we are getting out a multi-hundred year wet period for California and the Southwest. Before then it was particularly arid, and we are returning to that and then some. Which is all really unfortunate as most of the concentrated population settling there has been since the 1800s, when the climate was maximally accommodating.
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Irrigation agriculture has been a primary source of life in places like Arizona for millennia. Reducing it down to "irrigation is unsustainable" is both incorrect and unproductive. It can be made sustainable, as long as we understand the system and respect appropriate limits within that. It's likely those changes will need to be larger than anyone wants, but they're still possible in a less dramatic way than "everyon…
> places like Arizona for millennia. Millennia? Do you have any references for this? AFAIK the natives did not do large scale irrigation, I'll be interested to know if that was the case. Further, my understanding is that we are getting out a multi-hundred year wet period for California and the Southwest. Before then it was particularly arid, and we are returning to that and then some. Which is all really unfortunate…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, instead of an appropriate local bonding ballot initiative (or whatever) to fund this like every other city does, they just throw up their hands and ask for state handouts? Maybe they are worried about the political implications of rising property taxes or water bills? Seems like a HUGE failure by an inept local government.
Considering Mississippi is one of the states most reliant on federal aid, I think maybe we should just say the whole state is a failure then? Maybe all of Mississippi should deal with the implications of raising their taxes even more. They’re a red state so I assume a state government official that campaigned to raise taxes wouldn’t win as easily as someone who campaigned to get federal money. The article i link says…
Huh? That isn't how that works at all. Cities issue bonds to raise the cash to pay for large projects. Those bonds are paid down over time or not at all if they just pay interest w/ no principle. A 10B project for a metro this size is a pretty manageable expense.
In this case, it seems like the local politicians simply didn't know how to do that or want to as raising taxes might make it difficult to get reelected.
The solution they seem to have arrived at is: Wait until things get so bad that there is a humanitarian crisis and the Feds have to bail us out. Which they will, because we don't want people to suffer without clean water.
So now the rest of us are made suckers as federal taxpayers are on the hook for this mismanagement/scam.
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Are you seriously saying that people in Jackson are not capable to taking care of themselves? And they need the state to do it for them?
Mississippi isn’t able to take care of themselves as a whole! https://mspolicy.org/mississippi-no-longer-the-state-most-re...
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under sink would be too inconvenient and all the RO membrane cartridges, or millipore filter cartridges are contaminated with PFAS, anyhow. it's literally everywhere. We have to run ours for 30 minutes before taking the ultra-pure water at the lab to drop the levels down to 'baseline'. Otherwise, the built up levels blow out the instruments.
30 minutes for every new filter? Or every time?
These filters only slow down the contamination relative to water flow rate. Think Of them as big chromatography columns or frontal analysis columns
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Are you seriously saying that people in Jackson are not capable to taking care of themselves? And they need the state to do it for them?
I know nothing about Jackson, but municipalities all around the country are reliant on money flowing federal>state>local, urban>rural, etc. There can be good reasons to subsidize infrastructure - for example, urban residents help maintain a rural farming community because they desire the agricultural products. It’s not even clear the entire state of Mississippi is “capable of taking care of themselves” as over 40 per…
Water supply is a local thing, and local leaders need to take responsibility, not blame the state.