Reference News Network reported on September 21, according to Reuters on September 20, Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, USA, became the defendant in an class action lawsuit, because the failure of an old water plant in the city last month caused local residents to have no clean water available.
reported that the lawsuit was filed in the Jackson Federal Court on the 15th, and mayor Zoqui Lumumba and a company that was employed in water supply system engineering. The lawsuit requested the court to order the city to carry out necessary repairs to the old water supply system and to ask for unspecified amounts of compensation.
The crisis began on August 29, when the flood paralyzed the water treatment plant, causing all the tap water of about 150,000 residents in the city, mainly African-American population, to be interrupted.
Also, according to Associated Press September 16, Mississippi intends to stop distributing free bottled water on the evening of the 17th, but the city government said the water pressure has not yet been fully restored. State health officials say lead in some pipes is still worrying, so pregnant women and young children should still use bottled water.
reported that why is this happening? Residents, politicians, experts and activists say the root cause is systemic racism.
On August 31, a worker in Jackson City supplies water to residents coming from a tank truck. (Reuters)
The city of Jackson has continued to decline since 1980 — 210 years after the city’s schools began to desegregate. Many white families move to the suburbs, so the income used to maintain infrastructure is reduced. Subsequently, middle-class blacks moved away, fleeing aging urban area and increasing crime. State and federal spending has not been able to make up the difference. "The legacy of ethnic zoning, apartheid, and legalization of economic discrimination ultimately leads to the isolation, isolation and separation of minorities into communities with narrowed tax bases, which has had an impact on the built environment, including infrastructure," said Marcus Hendrix, associate professor of urban research and planning at the University of Maryland. Experts in water infrastructure and environmental justice told the Associated Press that when it comes to water shortages and pollution, the working class people of color are the most vulnerable. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 80% of Jackson's population is black, with a poverty rate of 24.5%.
reported that Heather McTier Tony, who handles environmental justice issues across the United States for the U.S. Environmental Protection Fund, said that many predominantly minority communities lack the ongoing cleaning water. "Any community that lacks infrastructure maintenance is dealing with the same problem, maybe just in different scales. But across the country, in poor communities that are often predominantly black, brown and indigenous, at the forefront of the climate crisis, we see the same thing happening again and again."
Hendricks and Tony attribute the government's reduction in investment in communities of color to the "consequences of systemic racism."
Source: Reference Message Network
