Over the weekend, the US military delivered more than 1 million bottles of mineral water to Jackson, a Mississippi city where thousands of people ended up without drinking water.
It is estimated that the lack of water affects more than 200 thousand people. The problem started five days ago, shortly after a series of floods affected a water treatment plant in the region.
According to the authorities, work to restore the supply is in progress. But there is still no official forecast for the situation to resolve.
Meanwhile, the population faces difficulties in carrying out everyday tasks, such as flushing, cooking, washing dishes and taking a shower. And all this in the midst of a strong heat wave.
“It’s been horrible to run out of water,” Shirley Barnes told the BBC as she queued at a local market to buy more bottles. “It’s like living in caves. I never thought I’d be in this situation, but here we are.”
Currently, some residents don’t even have enough water pressure to flush and have to use chemical toilets that have been scattered throughout the city.
Several volunteers joined the National Guard to deliver water to Jackson residents, who are waiting in long lines in the 30C heat. Without water, many schools had to close their doors, also affecting the access of poorer students to food.
“Currently they can’t get together for class because there’s no water for cooking or for toilets. And sometimes, that’s the only food students have, it’s what they eat for breakfast and lunch at school.” , told the BBC Debbie Upchurch, mother of a teacher in the city.
‘Environmental racism’
“We’re all going through this crisis together,” says Ryan Bell, a Jackson resident. But he recognizes that part of the population of this mostly black city was already facing problems in accessing drinking water even before the floods reached the treatment unit.
“It’s a recurring problem. We have old infrastructure in a very old city.”
There is also inequality in the gradual restoration of the water supply as the repair progresses. Water pressure has been restored in homes and businesses close to the treatment plant, but buildings further away still have little or no water pressure.
“We have an obsolete water treatment plant that no authority has paid attention to for years,” says Professor Edmund Merem, an expert in urban planning and environmental studies at Jackson State University.
For Merem, there is another factor that has diverted attention and funding from Jackson’s crumbling water infrastructure: racism.
Experts and activists say what is happening in Jackson and cities like Flint, Michigan, where water supplies have been affected by lead contamination, is a direct legacy of generations of racial discrimination and segregation.
“This is a profound situation that has been in the works for decades,” says Arielle King, a lawyer and environmental activist. “The history of racial segregation in this country has contributed profoundly to the environmental injustices we see now.”
King mentions as an example the so-called “redlining”, which began in the 1940s when the government denied mortgages and loans to blacks as “too risky (to default)”.
The program lasted more than 40 years, and as a result, says King, predominantly black, low-income communities have been concentrated in areas with polluting industries, landfills, oil refineries and sewage treatment plants.
And these areas, says King, exist and suffer from these consequences to this day.
She cites areas of the US like the so-called Cancer Corridor, which was once home to extensive Louisiana plantations along the Mississippi River and is now the industrial backbone of more than 150 oil refineries.
For decades, predominantly black residents have suffered from some of the highest cancer rates in the country due to pollution.
King says the legacy of this kind of environmental racism, along with decades of underinvestment in low-income areas, is behind Jackson’s tragic plight.
“You can say there are different factors that lead to flooding, but people wouldn’t be exposed to flood-prone areas if they hadn’t been subjected to the ‘red lines’ policy,” says King.
This text was originally published here
