Jackson’s Mayor, joined by the city attorney and the new third-party manager, called a town hall last night to hear and address the concerns of citizens.
One attendee asked the mayor “I just want to know, how we gonna pay a $5,000 or $2,000 bill for something we ain’t using. Can’t use.”
The meeting was held in South Jackson at Forest Hill High School, which is often one of the first locations to lose water pressure and the last to have it restored when there is a disruption in the system.
Ted Henifin, who was tasked by the US Department of Justice to oversee the city’s water system, says he is just getting started at the treatment plants. But he says those industrial locations are like the heart of the city’s sprawling water distribution infrastructure.
“Fixing the heart if you haven’t fixed all the bleeding hemorrhaging that’s going on throughout the body doesn’t solve it. And so I think we, the plants believe it or not are the easy part of this equation,” says Henifin. “And we’re really gonna try to figure out how to get a lot of work done in the distribution system to solve these problems that we’re having.”
Part of the solution, Henifin says, is replacing nearly 100 miles of small-diameter pipe that bottlenecks the system. But that will be a long-term goal, as replacing pipes costs millions of dollars per mile and will take years to complete.
Research is underway to identify grants to fund these changes. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba says the city is not planning to raise the price of tap water, but won’t rule out adjustments either.
“Let’s understand the heart of what the whole fight against privatization and the whole fight against regionalization is about,” says Mayor Lumumba. “It is about the customer and not charging them rates that they can’t afford. So we wouldn’t have that whole war, right, in order to turn back around and accomplish the same thing on the back end.”
Henifin is currently searching for water operators and says that the city’s public works staff will have opportunities to switch their employment if they qualify. Employees who choose to not make that change will be relocated within the public works department.
