For the 150,000 or so residents of Jackson, Miss., the water situation is a mess. The capital city's main treatment plant was on the brink of collapse, with most households having little or no water pressure. And if residents are lucky enough to have a trickle from their faucets, that water isn't safe to drink, reports the New York Times. Public schools have switched to virtual learning in the interim, and local businesses were scrambling. Coverage:
- Emergency: "Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale," said Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves in a briefing Monday evening. "It means the city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs." Reeves declared an emergency and said the state was mobilizing to provide bottled water for residents and a tanker system for firefighters, but he warned that the logistics of such an effort were "massively complicated."
- Latest trouble: This week, heavy rains caused the Pearl River to flood city streets, and though the flooding itself wasn't as bad as initially feared, it worsened already existing water problems in the city and affected the OB Curtis treatment plant. The facility had to drastically cut water production because of the flooding's effect on a nearby reservoir, reports WLBT.