re: Black Families Bear the Brunt of the Jackson Water Crisis and Environmental Racism

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Jackson’s water woes aren’t new. In 2014, 90% of city voters approved a one percentage-point increase in the sales tax in part to fund water and sewer repairs. In the past nine years, the city has allocated nearly $490 million from its capital budget to water and sewers—about $3,200 per resident. But much of the money hasn’t been well spent, and the city’s water problems have worsened.

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The city’s progressive mayor, Democrat Chokwe Lumumba, blames white state Republicans for not providing sufficient funding.
Yet the state made available nearly $170 million in loans and grants from 2016 to 2021 for Jackson’s water and sewer infrastructure. Earlier this year, Mr. Lumumba grumbled when the state offered another $25 million from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds because lawmakers insisted on exercising oversight on how the money was spent. The state had good reason.

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The city had “failed to perform filter maintenance” at both of its water treatment plants, EPA noted. Jackson residents say the city doesn’t respond to calls when pipes burst or sewage backs up in their homes.

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In any case, city revenue increased to $264 million from $242 million between 2018 and 2020. Yet the city’s water and sewage disposal system ran $27 million in operating deficits during that time.

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The progressive media narrative is that Jackson’s problems are the inevitable result of whites fleeing the predominantly black city, resulting in a shrinking of the local tax base. But many blacks have been escaping too. Blame lousy schools and infrastructure and a homicide rate that is among the highest in the U.S

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It’s inevitable these days that any urban calamity immediately becomes a progressive parable of systemic racism and “anti-government ideology,” as one columnist put it

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Their votes gave them THEIR government and the consequences of their failed leaders. But racisim and others are to blame for their provlems.

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Infrastructure in many predominately Black communities in the US has been failing for decades, and Black families are left to bear the brunt of environmental racism.

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