- Chichi Izondo, Muhammed Madi and Chelsea Bailey
- Jackson – Mississippi
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6 hours ago
Marshall says he has no choice but to drink from contaminated tap water
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Marshall lives in West Jackson, Mississippi, a part of the city inhabited by the majority of black and poor citizens. He says he has no choice but to drink from tap water, which Jackson residents have been advised to avoid. When you turn on the tap, brown water comes out.
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He says the water has been like this for eight months and he has no choice but to drink it.
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“Yes, madam, I drink this water.” He smiles when I ask him if he’s worried: “I’ll be 70 this month,” he replies.
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Marshall doesn’t have a car, so he can’t go to sites where the National Guard distributes clean water. He also has no gas or electricity due to a recent fire in the house next door, which means he can’t boil water to make it safer.
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“It’s rare [المياه] Clear. Sometimes it is a little lighter, or a little darker. And when I open the faucet in the tub, it’s always mixed with rust at first, and then it gets a little lighter. But every time, rust comes first.
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Jackson City Councilman Aaron Banks lived in the Mississippi capital for most of his life and now represents a district of more than 90% of its black population.
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Banks says he believes a devastating combination of crumbling infrastructure and climate change ultimately led to a disruption to Jackson’s water supply.
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photo released, Reuters
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Volunteers distributed bottles of drinking water to Jackson residents
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In 2020, when temperatures as low as minus zero degrees Celsius shut down the Jackson City desalination plant, Banks says his circuit ran out of water for about six weeks, the longest in nearby areas. The city’s infrastructure has since found it extremely difficult to adapt.
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“It hasn’t been a month without a notification telling us that the water is boiling, or that the water pressure has dropped or there is no water in the past two years,” says Banks. “.
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From time to time, says Mr. Banks, those who have to adapt to these circumstances are mostly people of color. The local council member adds that for many years he has seen funds pumped into infrastructure for the towns and neighborhoods around Jackson, but no money has been devoted to the restoration and modernization of much needed facilities, including the town’s desalination plant. .
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“People’s health is secondary to the state,” says Sarina Larson.
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Interestingly, President Joe Biden’s historic infrastructure plan has allocated funds to disadvantaged communities such as Jackson, whose population in 2020 was approximately 163,000. But the funds are allocated by state lawmakers who, according to Banks, tend to be politically minded and prioritize projects serving their constituencies rather than focusing on tackling the backlog of problems in Jackson.
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“We have an antiquated desalination plant that no one has paid attention to in years,” says Professor Edmund Merrim, professor of urban planning and environmental studies at Jackson State University.
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“I think the problem is that the answer is usually improvised.”
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But Professor Miriam also sees another factor diverting funds from Jackson’s crumbling infrastructure: racism.
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Experts and observers say what is happening in Jackson and other cities like Flint, Michigan, whose water sources have been contaminated with lead, is a direct legacy of segregation and racial segregation for generations.
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“It’s an established and decades-old position,” says Ariel King, a lawyer and environmental justice advocate.
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“I think the history of racial segregation and the refusal to grant mortgages in this country have contributed enormously to the environmental injustice we are witnessing now.”
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The practice of “redlining,” or banks’ refusal to lend to non-whites, began with the government’s blessing in the 1940s because lending to people of color was considered too risky.
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The program has been running for more than 40 years and as a result, according to King, low-income, predominantly black communities have concentrated in areas with polluting industries such as oil refineries, wastewater desalination plants and landfills.
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He adds that these areas still exist today.
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King gives some examples of regions in the United States such as what some call the “Cancer Route”. This area of Mississippi was once home to many of Louisiana’s vast farms, but now contains 150 petrochemical plants and oil refineries.
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For decades, the population – the majority of whom are black – has suffered from one of the highest cancer rates in the country due to pollution.
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King says the legacy of that kind of environmental racism, as well as decades of underinvestment in low-income areas, is manifesting itself in Jackson.
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“They can say that there are several factors that lead to the floods, but people would not have found themselves having to live in areas prone to flooding had it not been the practice of denying them mortgages in the first place,” he says.
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“So the problem goes back every time to race and environmental racism, unfortunately.”
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Sarina Larsson is in law school and lives in a few houses in Marshall. She moved to Jackson from Sacramento and wants to become a public defender. Sarina also blames the area’s problems on a policy of refusing to grant mortgages to blacks.
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In her kitchen, there are bowls of different sizes on the floor, which she places to collect rainwater, and then uses a water purifier.
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“Jackson’s pipes contain lead, so I’ve never drank a glass of tap water and don’t use it to brush my teeth,” Sarina says.
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But he admits that most people here can’t afford the $ 300 water purifier he bought.
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“A water crisis like this only becomes a problem if it affects upper-class people,” he says. “He goes on to Jackson and provides an example. The health of the people is secondary to the state.”
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“People of color are deprived of basic services,” says Imani Olugbala-Aziz.
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We met Imani Ulugbala-Aziz at a local community center, where she and others from the Jackson Cooperation volunteer group distribute bottled water. They sold out in less than half an hour. Imani tells us that there is hardly any water in her house.
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“It’s a crisis of opinions and values, and there’s a lot of environmental racism going on. We pay taxes to the government to do what it has to do, but it doesn’t.”
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“We are deprived of basic services. People of color are deprived of basic services. We live in the worst parts of the city just to get on with life.”
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“We don’t ask for buildings, we just want to live and have natural things like running water, clean water”.
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He says the local area has a high homelessness rate and that shops are closed, making it difficult for people to buy water.
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“The water boil notification has been active for about a month. The water is not potable, so what can we do? How do we feed our babies, how do we cook and eat?”
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Imani says people pay high bills, unlike people who live in white majority areas.
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“It’s not something that’s just starting to happen, it’s a situation that gets worse over time and can no longer continue as it is. We’re suffering here.”
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