Jackson, Mississippi, preparing to go without water periodically for up to 10 years as crisis continues (Truncated)

Organizations in Jackson, Mississippi, are asking for help from other states as the water crisis dries up resources.

It’s been over five months since the Pearl River crested and Jackson, Mississippi’s water system failed. Now, crews are working to replace the pipe system, but families and businesses are prepared to go without water periodically, for up to 10 years.

Cities across the country are replacing fragile water pipe systems. Besides Jackson, there's Flint, Michigan, Baltimore, Maryland, and Houston, Texas.

The systems are replaced section-by-section after failure. But, these years-long projects can cause water main breaks.

Kenneth Wayne Jones serves as Hinds County Administrator, which includes Jackson. He said their water crisis was decades in the making and the situation will get worse before things become better.

"Every move you make to try to alleviate this problem causes pressure to go in another direction. And, when it gets to one direction, there are old pipes, or, the water main breaks. And, when the water mains start to break, it shifts pressure everywhere. It’s especially hard on our businesses," Jones said.

Jones said Jackson's longstanding water issue has caused years of economic decline.

Our research shows over 6,000 out of nearly 9,000 businesses have left the city in that same time period.

Fredick Womack runs Operation Good. He said as national attention has shifted to other cities or issues, local organizations are feeling the strain and aren’t sure if their resources can sustain five to ten more years of water outages.

this is something i saved from last year.

Tuesday, September 20, 2022
How Jackson’s Water System Collapsed

Now it’s JJ’s turn to tell the REST of the story.

Much has been said in the media about the Jackson water crisis by reporters who are experts on everything and knowledgeable about nothing. They blame the flooding of the O.B. Curtis plant, white flight, racism, and a mean ole legislature that refuses to help Jackson. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba wasn’t about to discourage such tales of woe as he sought to avoid any responsibility for the catastrophe that happened on his watch. Well, perhaps it’s time to tell the real story of how the Jackson water treatment system fell apart, media be damned.

The O.B. Curtis water treatment plant opened in 1993 with a treatment capacity of 25 million gallons per day. The plant used a conventional filter system. The J.H. Fewell plant treated up to 50 million gallons per day. Part of Fewell was built in 1914 but it was expanded several times over the years. However, the plant was not built to handle sludge so MDEQ urged Jackson to replace the plant with another source of water in the late 1990’s.

Jackson built the membrane side of the O.B. Curtis plant in 2007, doubling capacity to 50 million gallons per day. The expansion allowed Fewell to reduce production to 20 million gallons per day. Thankfully, Jackson never shut down the workhorse by the Waterworks Curve.

Read those two paragraphs again. Despite all the shrieks about the old and worn out O.B. Curtis plant in the national media, the plant is fairly young. Such plants are supposed to have much longer lives than the NFL stadiums that seem to be replaced every 25 years now. Half of the plant is 29 years old while the other half is only 15 years old. However, actual facts don’t fit the media narrative so the facts are ignored by all, including the mayor.

Such a narrative may be convenient but is totally at odds with reality: Jackson receives more tax revenue than ever despite “the loss of its tax base.” Even if such were not true, the loss of the tax base should not affect the water treatment system.

The water treatment system is a stand-alone enterprise that should fund itself. How a public utility works is simple enough to understand, even for reporters. Set the rates, bill the customers, collect from the customers, and cut off service when the customer does not pay. The rates should reflect what it costs to provide service, perform maintenance, and make improvements as needed. Unfortunately, such reductive analysis places more blame on Jackson than it does racism, hence its downplay by both the media and the mayor.

To truly understand how Jackson’s water system collapsed, one must go back in time ten years ago to the Siemens project, the original sin from which all Jackson’s water problems flow. As 2013 mayoral candidate Jonathan Lee warned, the Siemens project blew up the water system worse than anyone could imagine.

Siemen’s Project

Mayor Harvey Johnson conjured up the $90 million Siemens project in 2012. Siemens promised to replace Jackson’s water meters with new-fangled models that would yield $123 million in savings through more accurate billing. Dazzled by the nine-figure savings, Election Man conned the City Council into issuing a no-bid contract to Siemens at the end of 2012, six months before he left office.

Unfortunately, the Siemens deal turned into a Predators Ball of sorts for Jackson. The Mayor’s financial consultant roped Jackson along into this bad bond deal as he walked out with a $182,000 fee. He recently pleaded guilty to fraud on a bond deal while the SEC permanently revoked his license. As bond pimps raked in fees, the Mayor forced his “contractor” buddies down Siemens’ throat under the guise of minority participation. Unqualified contractors were added to the project, driving up costs while lowering the quality of the work. As is too often the case in Mississippi, quality is ignored when pockets are stuffed and the Siemens project was no exception.

The Siemens project may have promised more money but it instead delivered chaos, breaking the billing system. Thousands of customers stopped received bills while thousands more received “crazy bills” as their bills jumped to thousands of dollars. Frustrated customers sought help in vain as phone calls to customer service often went unanswered. The billing debacle turned into a volcano that blew up the water/sewer when it erupted and erupted it did.

The Destruction of Jackson Water/Sewer System Finances

Mayor Lumumba’s father, Chokwe Lumumba, replaced Mayor Johnson in July 2013 but unexpectedly died in February 2014. Councilman Tony Yarber became mayor in 2014 as the billing fiasco spiraled out of control. Outrage grew until a panicked Yarber administration told customers not to pay their bills as it issued a moratorium on water cutoffs in 2016 and 2017. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba removed the moratorium after he assumed the purple in July 2017. The bout of financial responsibility did not last as Mayor Lumumba quietly reinstated the moratorium in May 2020 without informing the public nor the City Council. The moratorium remained secret until this website broke the story in June 2021.

Cutting off the cutoffs had predictable results. Tell people they don’t have to pay their bills and guess what? They don’t pay their bills. The combination of the billing debacle and the moratorium on disconnects cratered Jackson’s water/sewer revenue.

How deep was the crater? The Lumumba administration stated at a 2021 press conference Jackson suffered nearly $40 million in uncollected water bills from 14,588 active accounts, including stranded bills. While so-called journalists sneer at “blaming” customers who didn’t pay their bills, the income statements told a different story as the old adage of following the money was never more true.

The city’s annual audits show every measure of the water/sewer finances went in the wrong direction
after meter installation began:

*Operating income fell from $7 million in 2012 to -$17 million in 2019. It climbed back to -$10 million in 2020 – after it received a $14 million infusion of Siemens settlement funds.

*Cash on Hand disappeared as it fell from $13 million in 2014 to $0.0 in 2017 where it remained for years.

*Accounts Receivables skyrocketed from $25 million in 2013 to $55 million in 2018.

*Water sales fell from $70 million in 2014 to $48 million in 2020.

Click on image to enlarge.

The charts all have one thing in common: they start going in the wrong direction within two years after the approval of the Siemens project.

Mayor Lumumba sued Siemens for $225 million in 2019. The principal and interest was $200 million over the life of the bonds. However, the city settled for $90 million in 2020. Only $14 million of the settlement went into the water/sewer system while $30 million went to attorneys, including a criminal defense attorney who had questionable expertise on such matters. The rest of the settlement repaid various loans.

What does it all mean? It means there was no revenue to fix things. No revenue to hire staff. No revenue to purchase chemicals or equipment (as shown in a water operator’s emails). No staff meant no maintenance. More and more of the plant depended on back-up parts as the first-line parts failed, never replaced. The city was forced to use the general fund budget to shore up the water/sewer budget, almost unheard of in an American city.

Myth: Jackson Went Broke Because of White Flight

As Jackson’s water/sewer system crumbled, the media drooled as it pulled out a familiar scapegoat: racism. It was a convenient trope requiring no analysis: Whites left Jackson, taking precious dollars with them to the burbs while the state was blamed for not giving Jackson a blank check.

Following the money tells a different story although it might be a bit much to expect reporters to actually read Jackson’s financial statements as most of them are ignorant on such things. More than a few probably think a debit is the sound of a frog. However, annual audits show more money than ever is going into Jackson’s coffers. Does this look like Jackson’s tax revenue “disappeared”?

Follow the money once again to get the rest of the story:

* Total revenue increased from $180 million in 2003 to $264 million in 2020.

*Property tax revenue rose from $59 million in 2002 to $79 million in 2020. Does that sound like disappearing property taxes?

*Sales tax & other revenue increased from $36 million in 2002 to $54 million in 2020.

The media ignores this picture because it doesn’t fit the narrative of a broke city ruined by whites fleeing en masse because they are scared of blacks. It is much easier to blame racism than report that as Jackson collected more, it served less.

Who is in Charge?

Jackson is a $300 million enterprise yet its leaders lack any management experience. Mayor Lumumba practiced law in a small firm prior to becoming Mayor at age 34. The Chief of Staff was a Jackson State University professor. The mayor’s first Chief Administrative Officer was a JSU music professor. His next CAO was an architect. The architect moved over to run Public Works after a few months even though he had no experience in such matters. The current CAO was a customer service manager at Entergy. Dickens comes to mind:

“Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got” (A Tale of Two Cities, Book II, Chapter VII)

No managers means simple management tasks don’t get done. Job openings for desperately needed positions are not posted online. No managers means shucking and jiving the health department while never taking its warnings seriously. No managers means not firing employees when they should be fired. No managers means nothing gets done nor is anyone held accountable. No managers means the Fewell plant comes within hours of shutting down this summer because no one could agree on ordering much-needed chemicals. No managers means making excuses matters more than making things happen.

No managers is how you blow off the EPA and allow a water system to fall apart through incompetence and neglect.

Orders & Coverups

The Mississippi State Department of Health began sounding the alarm on the water system in 2016. Successive administrations blew off the Health Department until the agency went running to big brother EPA near the end of 2019.

The EPA inspected the water treatment plants in February 2020 and discovered they were falling apart due to neglect, incompetence, and a shortage of employees. The agency issued an Emergency Administrative Order in March 2020 that is filled with crucial but eye-glazing details.

The lack of a technician meant “continuous monitoring equipment” at O.B. Curtis was “not repaired or calibrated” for over three years. pH meters, flow measurement devices, and other crucial equipment were not maintained. The continuous pH meters were off by up to 2 units in some cases. Plant operators were somewhat operating in the dark as they simply could not know the quality of the water they were treating. One-third of the south Jackson wells were out of action.

The staff didn’t conduct jar tests even though the system could not determine turbidity. No one knew if the membrane filters worked because no maintenance was performed. The UV filters used to disinfect water went offline for weeks at a time. A multitude of cheap parts did not work even though they are easy to replace. The sludge handling facility was inoperable. Record management, a foundation of water system management, was sloppy or at times non-existent.

Jackson’s negligence didn’t end with the water treatment plants. The city ignored all federal laws requiring Jackson to create and implement a lead service line replace program for years. Flint, Michigan, anyone?

The order set various deadlines for repairs and reports but Jackson repeatedly blew off the deadlines.

Mayor Lumumba kept the EPA emergency administrative order secret for over a year until this website broke the news of its existence in April 2021. Mayor Lumumba obfuscated, calling the order a “letter” or an “administrative process gap” at times as he tried mightily to avoid all talk of the order.

The Mayor refused to discuss the order with the City Council except behind closed doors. Mayor Lumumba told a Councilman, a West Point graduate no less, the order was “over your head” when the Councilman wanted to discuss the order at a City Council meeting.

No chutzpah was too small for the mayor as he blamed the public for being “ill-informed” about the orderr as he quashed all discussion. When the order was mentioned, Mayor Lumumba deflected as he claimed the EPA said the water was safe to drink.

The water might have been safe to drink but the EPA order covered the working condition of the water treatment plants, not the quality of the drinking water. Big difference. Big, huge difference. It does not matter if the water is safe if there is no water to drink.

The Perfect Storm Arrives

While the Mayor covered up, the system veered towards collapse. Health Department employees prophetically warned in a June 2021 internal email:

This year has shown that the City of Jackson’s Water system is rapidly building toward a “perfect storm”: 1) Poor asset management and maintenance, 2) financial difficulties with an unwillingness to spend needed funds, and 3) the inability to consistently achieve compliance with various provisions of the SDWA (Safe Drinking Water Act). Considering the NEIC’s visit in February 2020, I believe that we can agree that the city is going in a negative direction. Logs indicated system components are being stretched to their breakpoint and membrane trains are one continuous failed MIT away from a shutdown along with logbook statements such as “called J. H. Fewell to go up on high service flows per M. Carter due to customer low pressure calls”. Plants are on the edge of failure. Items that are repeatedly reported by upper management as functional or repaired are continuously reported by plant staff as having issues or failing in the WOR and the Operator log submissions (specifically the MIT system for trains). we are very concerned about the city of Jackson’s growing amount of mechanical issues at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant and overall its ability to maintain adequate production of safe drinking water for its customers.

In other words, the Lumumba administration lied about the water treatment plants as they fell apart.

The perfect storm came in the form of the February 2021 double ice storm that crippled Jackson. The city lost water pressure for a week although some areas lost water service for a month. Desperate residents got water out of creeks just to flush their toilets. Icy roads made it difficult for many to get water while the same conditions prevented stores from opening or restocking.

The media descended upon Jackson for what would not be the last time, asking how an American city could go without water. The mayor stood ready with his usual arsenal of answers. White flight destroyed the city’s tax base. The state wouldn’t give the mayor a blank check. Racist city leaders ignored the south and west Jackson when they built the water plants. Such claims became a mantra, never challenged. The real truth was Jackson received more revenue than ever, but the Siemens fiasco transformed a healthy water/sewer system into a cripple unable to take care of itself.

Lies continued to roll as the media latched on to the mayor’s every word. Mayor Lumumba repeatedly blamed the state, telling national media such as the New York Times the state did not pay its water bills. The lapdogs slurped it all up with nary a challenging word. Such things are not done today, you understand. Yet again, the mayor lied and lied repeatedly about the unpaid water bills.

This website dug into the weeds and published records showing the state did indeed pay for its water, usually over $1 million per year. The mayor backtracked, claiming at a press conference he was “misinformed” as the media took him at his word. It would not be the last time the mayor was so “misinformed.”

Neglect and incompetence continued to plague O.B. Curtis. A fire broke out at the plant in April 2021, ,knocking out an electrical panel that controlled several pumps. Water production fell as the plant operated on the proverbial shoestring. The media wondered nine months later why the pumps were not yet fixed. The mayor said “supply-chain problems” kept Jackson from getting the electrical panel it needed to bring the pumps back online.

However, JJ caught the mayor shucking and jiving yet again. Health Department emails in December showed the Lumumba administration never ordered the electrical panel despite his claims to the contrary. The agency told Jackson to order the part within thirty days. Jackson finally did so –the day before the deadline expired in January. The panel finally arrived in May, a year after the fire.

More problems continued. The system lost water pressure in November 2021. The Lumumba administration said the injection of “bad batch of chemicals” into the system in November caused system pressure to drop to 65 psi. The “bad batch” indeed caused problems but that is not what crashed the system.

Health Department emails yet again told the real story as they revealed the lines feeding the chemicals into the injection point were clogged and did not work. Such lines are supposed to have back-up lines but those were the back-up lines. Health Department representatives caught a plant employee using a rubber hose to inject the needed chemicals. Yet again, the failure to maintain and replace equipment broke the Jackson water system while the administration hid the truth.

Total Collapse

The system limped along as Jackson endured five boil water notices in 18 months. Residents grew battle-weary while restaurants struggled survive. Business owners publicly pleaded with everyone and anyone who would listen to fix the water system. Such was the status quo in the summer of 2022.

The O.B. Curtis plant suffered an ammonia leak that interrupted treatment for “more than two days” in June. However, the city only issued a boil water notice and warned some areas might lack water pressure. The city did not report the ammonia leak nor the evacuation of the employees to the public nor the Health Department. The media discovered the leak when a report of the leak appeared on the National Response Center’s website. The Chief of Staff refused to answer any questions on whether any employees were injured, citing HIPAA. Noticing a pattern?

Through it all, the plants lacked qualified personnel, including precious Class A water operators. The EPA noted the lack of Class A operators in its 2020 order yet Mayor Lumumba said they were almost impossible to find due to the dual filtration systems at O.B. Curtis even though earlier Mayors kept the plants staffed.

A fed-up EPA ordered Jackson to answer basic questions such as how many vacancies existed, all correspondence about staffing issues, and how the water system maintained pressure when part of O.B. Curtis was out of action. Jackson being Jackson, the Lumumba administration submitted the answers after the deadline.

The EPA inspected the plants in March 2022 and found the water treatment system was still going backwards despite the federal government’s efforts to help Jackson. The agency warned in July the system was close to failure.

The system continued to suffer from a lack of operators. No one could take time off unless someone worked extra hours. The system suffered an “exodus” of employees due to low pay. “Malfunctioning water meters” caused water revenue to fall a full third since 2016, depriving the system of the money it needed to operate. Jackson suffered triple the number of average line breaks for such a system. The water at both plants was frequently outside the recommended pH.

Amargeddon almost struck in July when Fewell came within hours of closing due to a lack of necessary chemicals. Public works officials bickered over purchasing the chemicals as precious days ticked away. Jackson finally purchased the chemicals on the same day the plant would have shut down.

The Health Department issued a boil-water notice for Jackson in July as well although Mayor Lumumba heatedly disputed the order, claiming the water was safe. He even said the agency’s leadership disagreed with its own staff as he took his brinkmanship to the limit. Behind the scenes, Health Department officials knew the real state of the water system, despite Mayor Lumumba’s protestations.

Doomsday finally arrived in the form of a flood. A 24-hour rainstorm dumped over five inches of water on the Jackson metro area. The O.B. Curtis plant easily survived the 2020 and 2014 floods but its luck finally gave out although flooding did not reach the plant. JJ drone photos shot at 4 PM on August 29 show the floodwaters never came close to the plant. Mayor Lumumba tried to say they were taken before the flood. Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Former 30-year Clarion-Ledger photographer Rick Guy shot those photos for JJ.

Floodwater upriver changed the chemical composition of the lake that provides Jackson’s water. Lacking the staff and working equipment to handle the change, the plant failed. Two pumps were already down while the plant depended on smaller backups. More problems developed as homes and businesses began reporting a loss of water service on August 20. Jackson’s water treatment system crashed. Faced with no other choice, the state moved in and took over the water treatment plants.

Reporters moved in with patented phony outrage and “analysis” as they pulled out their well-worn playbooks. Some even reported O.B. Curtis flooded even though floodwaters never reached the plant. The networks ignored their own local reporters who knew the story backwards and forwards as their national reporters parachuted in to Jackson, asked their cookie cutter questions about equity and environmental racism, and went back home to their bubbles.

Instead of investigating, the media spoke to the one person who had the strongest motive to lie and lie he did as Mayor Lumumba appeared in countless interviews, spinning tale after tale of how it was all the fault of Republicans. Unfortunately for all, the media reported it all as fact, not to be questioned. Such is the state of modern journalism today. Why report reality when it can be manufactured?

The reality is a decade of incompetence blew up Jackson’s water system. Mayor Johnson destroyed the billing system with his Siemen’s project. Mayors Yarber and Lumumba cut off the cut offs, depriving the water/sewer system of much needed revenue. Mayor Lumumba covered up the truth as the water treatment plants fell apart on his watch and that, my friends, is the bottom line.

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