[Experts and advocates say what is happening in Jackson - and in
towns like Flint in Michigan, where the water supply was contaminated
with lead - is a direct legacy of generations of discrimination and
segregation.]
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JACKSON WATER CRISIS: A LEGACY OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM?  
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Chi Chi Izundu, Mohamed Madi & Chelsea Bailey
September 3, 2022
BBC [[link removed]]

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_ Experts and advocates say what is happening in Jackson - and in
towns like Flint in Michigan, where the water supply was contaminated
with lead - is a direct legacy of generations of discrimination and
segregation. _

Marshall says he has no choice but to drink what comes out of the
tap,

 

MARSHALL LIVES IN WEST JACKSON, IN THE US STATE OF MISSISSIPPI - A
PREDOMINANTLY BLACK AND POOR PART OF THE CITY. HE HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO
DRINK THE TAP WATER THAT JACKSON RESIDENTS HAVE BEEN TOLD TO AVOID.
WHEN HE TURNS THE TAP ON - THE WATER RUNS BROWN.

He says it's been like this for about eight months and he has no
choice but to drink it.

"Yes ma'am. I been drinking it." He smiles when we ask whether it
worries him. "I turn 70 later this month," he says.

Marshall doesn't have a car, so he can't get to the sites where water
is being handed out by the National Guard. He also doesn't have
electricity or gas because of a recent fire in the house next door,
which means he can't boil the water to help make it safer.

"Very seldom it's pure. Sometimes it's a little lighter, a little
darker. In the bath tub when I first turn it on, it always comes out
rust, then it gets lighter. But every time, the rust comes first."

Jackson councilman Aaron Banks has lived in the Mississippi state's
capital for most of his life, and now represents a district that is
more than 90% Black.

He says he thinks a devastating combination of aging infrastructure
and climate change ultimately led to the latest collapse of Jackson's
water supply.

Volunteers have been handing out bottles of drinking water to Jackson
residents

In 2020, when freezing temperatures caused Jackson's water treatment
facility to shut down, Mr Banks says his district went without water
for nearly six weeks - far longer than the surrounding areas. The
town's infrastructure has struggled to keep up ever since.

"We have not gone a month without having a 'boil water' notice or low
to no water pressure in the last two years," he says. "Unfortunately,
that is something we have gotten used to as American citizens - nobody
should be adapting to that type of quality of life."

Time and again, Mr Banks says, those who are forced to adapt have
predominately been people of colour. For years, the councilman says he
has watched state funding pour into the infrastructure of towns and
areas around Jackson - but they've missed the facilities that need it
most, including the city's water treatment plant.

"People's health is secondary to the state," Sarina Larson argues

President Joe Biden's landmark infrastructure bill earmarked money for
disadvantaged and underserved communities like Jackson, which in 2020
had a population of 163,000. But the funding is allocated by state
legislators who, Mr Banks says, often succumb to politics and
prioritise projects for their constituents instead of focusing on
fixing systemic issues in Jackson.

"We have a water treatment facility that's obsolete that nobody has
thought about for years," says Professor Edmund Merem, an urban
planning and environmental studies professor at Jackson State
University.

"I think the problem is that the reaction tends to be ad hoc."

But Prof Merem also believes another factor has pulled focus and
funding away from the Jackson's crumbling infrastructure - race.

Experts and advocates say what is happening in Jackson - and in towns
like Flint in Michigan, where the water supply was contaminated with
lead [[link removed]] - is a direct
legacy of generations of discrimination and segregation.

"This is a deep seated, decades-long, in the making kind of
situation," says Arielle King, a lawyer and environmental justice
advocate.

"I think the history of racial segregation and redlining in this
country have deeply contributed to the environmental injustices we see
right now."

Redlining began in the 1940s as a government-sanctioned practice of
denying mortgages and loans to people of colour because they were
deemed "too risky."

The programme lasted more than 40 years, and as a result, Ms King
says, low-income, predominately black communities were concentrated in
areas with polluting industries like landfills, oil refineries, and
wastewater treatment plants.

And those areas, she notes, still exist today.

She points to parts of the country like so-called Cancer Alley as an
example. Once the home to Louisiana's sprawling plantations, the area
along the Mississippi River is now an industrial highway of more than
150 oil refineries and factories.

For decades, the predominately black residents have suffered from some
of the highest rates of cancer in the nation because of pollution.

Ms King says the legacy of this kind of environmental racism, coupled
with decades of underinvestment in low-income areas is playing out in
Jackson.

"They can say that there are different factors that lead to flooding,
but people wouldn't be subject to areas that are susceptible to
flooding without redlining in the first place," Ms King says.

"So again, it does kind of come back to race, and environmental
racism, unfortunately, every time."

Sarina Larson is studying to be a lawyer and lives a few blocks from
Marshall. She moved from Sacramento and wants to be a public defence
lawyer. She too blames redlining for the issues the area has been
having.

In her kitchen, there are bowls of varying sizes all over the floor.
She catches rain water in them and then uses a water filter.

"The pipes have lead in them in Jackson and so I would never drink a
glass of water," she says. "I don't brush my teeth with the tap
water".

But she admits that most people can't afford the $300 dollar (£260)
filter she bought.

"A water crisis like this doesn't become an issue until it affects
people of a higher class. It has been ongoing and Jackson has been an
example of that. People's health is secondary to the state."

Imani Olugbala-Aziz says "people of colour are underserved"

We met Imani Olugbala-Aziz at a local community centre where she and
others from the volunteer group Cooperation Jackson were handing out
bottled water. It took less than an hour for them to run out. She
tells us she barely has water at her own home.

"It's a crisis of views and values and there's a lot of environmental
racism going on. We are sending our money to the government to get
what needs to be done, done. And they're not doing it.

"We're underserved. People of colour are underserved. We stay in the
worst parts of town, just so we can survive.

"We're not asking for mansions, we just want to live and have the
normal stuff, running water, clean water," Ms Olugbala-Aziz says.

She says the local area has a high homeless rate and local shops have
closed which makes it hard for people to buy water.

"We've been on the boiled water alert for about a month. It's not
drinkable, so what do we do? How do we feed our children, how do we
cook and eat?"

Ms Olugbala-Aziz says people are paying high water bills, whilst those
in predominately white areas aren't.

"This is not something that has just happening. This is slow rolling
and it has gotten to the point of untenable. We're struggling here."

Where water is so dirty 'we shower with mouths shut'

_CHI CHI IZUNDU is a senior Digital Reporter with BBC News. Chi Chi
started her journalistic career at the age of 17 as a regular
columnist for Girl About Town magazine. A few years later she joined
BBC London 94.9 as a researcher, before graduating to become a
producer working on the Saturday Sport show, the Jon Gaunt show,
Drive, Vanessa Feltz and other programmes. She then left to complete a
Postgraduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism at City University.
Afterwards, she worked at Virgin Radio on their entertainment news
team. She also freelanced at Sky News and worked at ITN before
returning to the BBC as a reporter for BBC Radio 1Xtra. She also
presented their two hour news magazine show, TXU and was the
entertainment presenter on the Trevor Nelson breakfast show. She then
joined the BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat entertainment news team, breaking
a number of big stories, including doing a week long expose on the
ticketing industry which contributed to Newsbeat winning a Sony Gold
award. Chi then moved to the Victoria Derbyshire show, with a brief to
bring “hard entertainment news stories to the programme”. As well
as breaking a story on the controversial police risk assessment form
696, Chi also exposed the connection between Grime music and gang
violence in the UK, how Robbie Williams management were charging fans
higher prices for tickets on resale sites, despite signing a public
notice against them historically. Chi has also worked for the BBC’s
Newsgathering team, performing as a Correspondent on a variety of
stories for their flagship news programmes, the Six and Ten o’clock
evening news, including travelling to Jamaica to cover the Windrush
scandal, how Xanax was being used by children as young as 11, plus the
Mercury prize winners._

_MOHAMED MADI is a senior journalist and filmmaker for BBC News. He
has worked across TV, radio and online in over 30 different countries
including Libya, Ukraine and Venezuela. His work has shed light on
abuse of LGBTQ refugees in Dutch refugee camps, the final hours of the
Karzai administration, and the aftermath of the 2019 Langford family
massacre in northern Mexico. His most recent documentary, From
Kurdistan with Sorrow, explored the impact of the 2021 English Channel
migrant disaster. He was also a part of the BBC’s award-winning
coverage of the Arab Spring. Mohamed has appeared as a panelist on JST
masterclasses and also works with the Media Trust._

_CHELSEA BAILEY is a journalist and video producer for BBC News who
specializes in producing nuanced, character-led videos that explore
race, health and inequity in today’s polarized political and social
climate. _

* Jackson Mississippi
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* water
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* Racism
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* environment
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* infrastructure
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* health
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* sanitation
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* Climate Change
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