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NBC tech and culture reporter Kat Tenbarge tweeted how the ongoing water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, is the result of "environmental racism" but became upset when users pointed out Democrats have been in control for decades and it appears local politicians ignored warning signs. "I’s the largest city in Mississippi. It’s 80% Black. Their water system is failing because of years of neglect. This is environmental racism," Tenbarge tweeted. When conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller said Republicans haven't controlled the city for a long time, Tenbarge said, "Oh, that's where all the racists in my mentions came from."

The drinking water system in Jackson — Mississippi’s largest city and home to more than 160,000 residents — is failing, state officials announced on Monday. Thousands of Jackson residents already have no or little water pressure, and officials cannot say when adequate, reliable service will be restored. The city water system has been plagued with problems for years, including tens of thousands of residents losing water between one and three weeks during a 2021 winter storm. At a press conference Monday night, Gov. Tate Reeves said the city’s largest water treatment plants may be completely down. “The O.B. Curtis plant...

HOUMA, LA (CBS Local) – A potentially deadly brain-eating amoeba has been found again in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. Independent testing returned positive results for Naegleria fowleri, which causes fatal brain swelling and tissue destruction, in the community of Pointe-aux-Chenes, according to WWL-TV, as well as The Courier. The Details: A brain-eating amoeba has been detected in the Louisiana water system It is the third time since 2015 that the potentially deadly organism has been found in the state The amoeba can cause brain swelling and seizures according to the CDC The Terrebonne Consolidated Waterworks District issued the notification Sunday and...

Call them the fortunate ones: Nearly 4,000 California companies, farms and others are allowed to use free water with little oversight when the state is so bone dry that deliveries to nearly everyone else have been severely slashed. Their special status dates back to claims made more than a century ago when water was plentiful. But in the third year of a drought that has ravaged California, these “senior rights holders” dominated by corporations and agricultural concerns are not obliged to conserve water. Nobody knows how much water they actually use, though it amounts to trillions of gallons each year,...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A major Northern California earthquake could severely damage the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levee system and jeopardize the water supply for two-thirds of Californians for more than a year, a top state water official warned Tuesday. Last year, the unexplained collapse of a single levee shut water pumping for days and cost $100 million to repair. An earthquake could lead to the collapse of many sections of levees, which channel Northern California rivers on their run to San Francisco Bay, said Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources. "This is not a worst-case scenario," he...

Just a week after a Manhattan hospital was blamed for the death of a patient from Legionnaires' disease, another said that it may have found the bacteria inside of it as well. Harlem Hospital Center officials said traces of legionella bacteria was found on a sink and a shower head at its building on West 136th Street. But the hospital said no cases of the disease was found in patients. Officials at the hospital said they were superheating its water supply and taking additional steps to kill the bacteria. The news comes just after four patients contracted Legionnaires' disease at...

NEW YORK State health officials are investigating the death of a Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center patient, which may have been caused by an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease. The officials believe the bacteria may have been in the hospital's water system. Richard Montesano died last Wednesday shortly after coming to the hospital for a heart condition. He was using a machine that sprayed water in his throat to fight sleep apnea, but the hospital did not warn his family that tap water could be dangerous. Legionnaire's disease can be found in the water systems of large buildings and is hazardous to...

QUANTITIES of a cyanide-based substance found in a Rome flat used by four suspected Islamic terrorists may have been part of a "chemical bomb" plot against the city. The bomb theory emerged yesterday as magistrates charged the four, all Moroccans, with subversive terrorism, a crime carrying a maximum sentence of 15 years. The investigations into the men, arrested on Tuesday, initially focused on suggestions that they were planning an attack the on city's water supply or the American embassy. But officials said the nine pounds of potassium ferro-cyanide would have been too difficult to introduce into water conduits, where their ...