Jackson Jambalaya

 Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba might get an assist from the EPA in his efforts to kick the state out of any bailouts for Jackson's water system.  Annie Snider reported in Politico last week:

Advocacy groups that see racial bias as a major cause of the water crisis in Jackson, Miss., are debating new strategies for taking the Republican-controlled state government out of the lead role when it comes to steering federal spending in its capital city.

Those tactics could include filing a federal civil rights complaint accusing the state of shortchanging the Black-majority city of 150,000 people when distributing federal water infrastructure dollars. Another option under consideration, people involved in the discussions said, is getting Congress to steer additional water funding to Jackson without Mississippi’s involvement — a sharp change from the central role states traditionally play in distributing these kinds of dollars.

 And then there is what advocates dub the nuclear option: pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to revoke the state’s authority to carry out enforcement of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. EPA would then oversee Mississippi’s more than 1,000 drinking water systems directly, something it now does only in Wyoming and the District of Columbia. That would put the federal government in charge of not just distributing federal dollars, but also inspecting the systems’ infrastructure and ensuring water quality meets federal standards....

 Does anyone want to guess which option appeals most to these groups? 

“The state is in a place, it’s got a lot of power to either make things easier for Black communities or to make things harder, and what we feel like has happened in Mississippi is that the state has used its power to make things harder for Black folks,” said Abre’ Conner, director of environmental and climate justice with the NAACP...

Really? That community blew up its own water system through ten years of successive mayors and didn't need any Republican help in doing so.   Blowing up the billing system, covering up EPA orders, stalling on ordering much-needed parts, allowing staffing to wither away, and managing to lose nearly $20 million a year on water was done by who? 

Ms. Snider shows about as much knowledge about the Jackson water system as does the rest of the drive-by reporters: 

The immediate emergency in Jackson receded late last week when the city lifted a boil-water order that had been in place for more than 40 days, after floodwaters inundated the city’s drinking water plant. But it will still take years and millions, if not billions, of dollars to repair the decrepit water system, which first went into operation in 1914.

Yes, Ms. Snider, Fewell went into operation over 100 years go.  However, the cursed O.B. Curtis plant was built in 1993 and 2007 and is supposed to have a daily treatment capacity of 50 million gallons.  Small detail, I know. 

JJ has a pretty good idea who the source is for Ms. Snider's article.  Notice anything here? 

A 2020 engineering report from EPA detailed the plant’s many problems, including inadequate staffing, “inoperable” equipment and failures to monitor for lead. EPA issued an enforcement order the same year, finding that the system “presented an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of persons served by the system.” In 2021, federal regulators and the city reached a legal agreement to bring the city into compliance with federal drinking water requirements.

Um, yeah.  What did the mayor call the emergency administrative order? "Letter", "administrative process gap", and of course, "report."   This was no accident, Ms. Snider called the order "a review" in another article published last week. It seems she is just as determined as is the mayor to avoid calling the order an order.  

The crux of the various options is the state allegedly discriminated against Jackson in allegedly withholding federal funds for Jackson.  There is always a rest of the story so it will be interesting to see the state's response if lawsuits are indeed filed.  

 Stay tuned.