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!
</sarc>
Meanwhile, it looks like some federal intervention, e.g., Army Corp of Engineers is likely needed.
More seriously, this is what we get when politicians chase "culture issues" and don't actually govern, and people care more about revenge on groups they don't like than electing people who will actually govern.
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.
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 percent of their general operating revenue is supplied by the federal government (2017 numbers) which is consistently in the top five states for receiving federal aid.
I’m not an expert, but the defensiveness seems unwarranted.
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.
Does anyone have a map of US cities without safe drinking water? I can't keep track at this point. Why isn't the EPA on this? They should have a dashboard or something by now.
"Should" implies it's their responsibility, making them the National Bureau in Charge of Municipal Water Supply. It would be nice if they could, but they can't do it for everyone.
It’s not a risk of contamination, it is that the treatment plant pumps can’t keep the water pressure up right now. Otherwise, river water is hopefully cleaner than what you’re trying to flush. Though in Jackson, MS, I wouldn’t take that as a given.
Over time, yes. Not so much a risk to humans but a risk to plumbing. As an example I have water risers on my fields that are fed by a lake. The horses also drink from this. Their water trough gets full of algae and moss. All the fittings I use have to be large enough to not get plugged up by the growth. I've tried using filters in the past but they plug up almost instantly.
A spin down filter solves for this. Manual ones are $50-$65, nice automated self cleaning ones are $175-$250. Great for well water imho to take the load off of disposable sediment filters further down the system. Depending on the make, you can typically swap out the stainless steel screens to change how aggressive your filtering is.
My experience with residential toilets is the tank refills often enough with low pressure anyways. I guess they are in really bad shape if they can't even fill peoples toilet tanks.
you're right that this isn't a problem of drought. it's a problem of infrastructure, money, and power. but north mississippi is in a drought. jackson isn't in north mississippi
Its future is already becoming reality in the watershed of the over-subscribed Colorado.
2022 is a remarkable year, one of a striking tipping point: in which a large number of climate change cautionary tales moved from speculative to the front page.
As with the rapid evolution of AI txt2image tools, the notable stories, milestones, data points, are coming too quickly to keep up with.
Jackson has its own specific problems, and they aren't drought-specific as others noted ITT;
but the story is nonetheless a useful addition to the growing list of examples of where our institutional and structural response to ecological and climatological challengs is grotesquely inadequate.
As in Kim Stanley Robinson's fantasies, hope seems to lie in something which today seems as unlikely as our current headlines did a few years ago: an intervention of some kind which puts actual decision-making power in the hands of policy makers and scientists who understand what is happening and the scale of response required to ride it out as a civilization.
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 "everyone is forcibly removed from the area".
Readit News
</sarc>
Meanwhile, it looks like some federal intervention, e.g., Army Corp of Engineers is likely needed.
More seriously, this is what we get when politicians chase "culture issues" and don't actually govern, and people care more about revenge on groups they don't like than electing people who will actually govern.
Seriously broken
It may surprise you to learn that Jackson is actually led by a quite liberal mayor: https://www.jacksonms.gov/departments/office-of-the-mayor/
* https://www.wlbt.com/2022/02/17/jackson-faces-uphill-battle-...
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 percent of their general operating revenue is supplied by the federal government (2017 numbers) which is consistently in the top five states for receiving federal aid.
I’m not an expert, but the defensiveness seems unwarranted.
https://mspolicy.org/mississippi-no-longer-the-state-most-re...
Deleted Comment
When water does reach a house, only about 5-20% is used for cooking or drinking - the rest for watering plants, showers, toilet flushing, washing.
Is it better to just outfit each home with an under-sink reverse osmosis machine and pipe in raw reservoir water?
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.
Deleted Comment
https://www.mississippifreepress.org/jackson-water-crisis-in...
> The city and state were both distributing bottled drinking water and non-potable water for toilets
Is there a risk to using untreated water from the river & reservoir to flush your toilets? Why would the city need to distribute toilet water?
Presumably they are shipping two types of water- potable and non-potable. The non-potable is less difficult to produce and ship.
You can flush a toilet by dumping a bucket of water into the bowl.
2022 is a remarkable year, one of a striking tipping point: in which a large number of climate change cautionary tales moved from speculative to the front page.
As with the rapid evolution of AI txt2image tools, the notable stories, milestones, data points, are coming too quickly to keep up with.
Jackson has its own specific problems, and they aren't drought-specific as others noted ITT;
but the story is nonetheless a useful addition to the growing list of examples of where our institutional and structural response to ecological and climatological challengs is grotesquely inadequate.
As in Kim Stanley Robinson's fantasies, hope seems to lie in something which today seems as unlikely as our current headlines did a few years ago: an intervention of some kind which puts actual decision-making power in the hands of policy makers and scientists who understand what is happening and the scale of response required to ride it out as a civilization.
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.
This is a good listen/read.