Maybe we can get some Jackson residents to speak up on this, but I would imagine this was a city-problem lingering for 30 years, and no one really sensed an urgency to rectify it until now.
You see the same issue for Cape Town, South Africa...where the city and nation was warned for several decades, and just never got around to taking action.
It was an identified problem for about 30 years. The State offered to take over the water system and Jackson refused. Too much graft and corruption in my opinion.