The drinking water disaster in Jackson, Miss., injects new urgency into a looming challenge for President Joe Biden: delivering federal money to communities that need it most.
The problem is most acute for impoverished communities with large minority populations — those that Biden’s administration hopes to help with promises to steer money to places reeling from decades of pollution and inequity.
Torrential downpours shuttered Jackson’s long-ailing wastewater treatment plant this week, sparking a crisis that left more than 150,000 of the city’s 160,000 residents without drinking water. Mississippians and advocates in communities facing disproportionate pollution burdens said Democratic-controlled Jackson is merely the latest majority-Black city struggling to secure its fair share of spending in states that are dominated by Republicans.
The O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant has been at the center of a decades-long debate over which entity has responsibility for financing long-needed repairs. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said fixing the city’s water system could cost more than $1 billion.
The state’s Republican leaders have accused the city of mismanaging the facility, while Jackson officials have said few cities could afford the kinds of costly upgrades it requires using utility revenue and municipal funds alone. Still, some elected Democratic officials, such as Rep. Bennie Thompson, have also expressed some frustration with the city.
For Biden, who has made helping those types of disadvantaged communities a priority, steering money through state governments reluctant to cede control to the federal government presents a major hurdle, according to advocates and Mississippi officials. Jackson officials have complained that the state legislature was too slow in distributing federal money from pandemic stimulus to the cities that needed it, taking until this April to pass spending measures from that March 2021 stimulus.
“The federal government is going to have to figure out ways to bypass these Republican-controlled governors and legislatures to get money in the hands of the cities which are going to be the Democratic Party stronghold,” said Kali Akuno, co-director of Cooperation Jackson, an environmental and climate justice organization in Jackson.
“Mississippi typifies that in a lot of ways,” said Akuno, who spoke by phone while scouring the Jackson area to find bottles of water as part of the emergency response effort. “But I think we’re kind of a canary in the coal mine for what’s coming down the road for a lot of municipalities facing similar infrastructure issues.”
Members of the Mississippi National Guard distribute water and supplies to Jackson residents, Sep. 2, 2022, in Jackson, Miss.
