The federal government will put $600 million toward repairing the troubled water system in Mississippi’s capital city — a project that the mayor has said could cost billions of dollars.
The federal government will put $600 million toward repairing the troubled water system in Mississippi’s capital city — a project that the mayor has said could cost billions of dollars.
Funding for Jackson water is included in a $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that passed the Senate on Thursday and the House on Friday. President Joe Biden is expected to sign it into law.
“As families begin to gather for the holiday season, today’s action providing emergency funding to address the fundamental need of safe drinking water for every household in Jackson should be celebrated as a promise of equitable infrastructure services for all families everywhere,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who lives in Jackson, said in a statement Friday.
Jackson is a majority-Black city of nearly 150,000, with about 25% of residents living in poverty.
The city has had water woes for years, and its system nearly collapsed in late August after heavy rainfall flooded the Pearl River and exacerbated problems at the main water treatment plant. Most of Jackson lost running water for several days, and people had to wait in lines for water to drink, cook, bathe and flush toilets.
Since late July, people in the city had been advised to boil water before consuming it because health officials had found cloudy water that could cause illness.
