This is not the first time the city of Jackson, USA has faced such a water crisis. In the capital of Mississippi, 150,000 people were again deprived of drinking water this summer, but it was particularly long and unworthy of the richest country in the world.
>> Watch our report in Jackson with residents deprived of drinking water for several weeks
For nearly seven weeks, residents of Jackson, overwhelmingly African Americans, were instructed to boil tap water – whether for drinking, cooking or washing dishes. This water crisis began at the end of July, but it worsened further in August following flooding. The local water treatment plant did not support it.
Results: no water at all in some when it was not a brown liquid that flowed from the taps. The images have circulated widely on social media. Jackson residents were also seen queuing for bottles of drinking water.
My water just now in Jackson, MS pic.twitter.com/LFfat03dCv
— Molly Minta (@mintamolly) September 9, 2022
Everything is more or less back to normal in mid-September, even if the authorities still advise filtered water for pregnant women and young children. Waiting for the next crisis, because it’s not a first for Jackson. During the winter of 2021, for example, pipes froze, depriving part of the population of water.
A federal investigation has just been launched, but everyone knows the problem:
the pipes are leaking, the water treatment plants are aging and, above all, there is not enough money to fix it. The president of United States Joe Biden has indeed signed, in 2021, a colossal infrastructure upgrade plan, of which half a billion dollars will go to water management in Mississippi. Except that it would take double for the city of Jackson alone, estimates its mayor.
Jackson is only the tip of the iceberg, in a country with dangerously aging infrastructure. The United States are still marked by another infamous water crisis in the past decade, lead contamination of the water in Flint, Michigan.