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It's Your Week: Poverty, racism, politics and the Jackson water crisis

Sallee Ann Harrison   | Paste BN

Leaders can point fingers all they want. But a Paste BN investigation found the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, was more than a century in the making, steeped in racism and neglect.

I'm Sallee Ann Harrison and welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers.

This week we talk about how history predicted the catastrophe in Jackson.

But first, don't miss these stories made possible with your Paste BN subscription:

'It was personal'

Like the rest of the nation, senior investigative reporter Emily Le Coz had been following the news about the latest water crisis in Jackson which this summer deprived some 170,000 residents of water for weeks. So, when the Paste BN Network newspaper based in Jackson – the Clarion Ledger – called for help, she answered.

"It was more than just a professional courtesy for me," Le Coz said. "It was personal."

Le Coz was born and raised in the Midwest and currently lives in Florida, but called Mississippi home for 12 years.

"I got my first reporting job in the state and worked my way up to the big paper in Jackson – yep, the Clarion Ledger – while also building a family," she said. "When we left in 2015, I thought I might never write another story about the Magnolia State or its capital city again."

But the water crisis offered an opportunity for Le Coz to lend her reporting chops to a subject she cared about deeply. Along with three colleagues from other Paste BN Network papers in the Southeast – Daniel Connolly, Hadley Hitson and Evan Mealins – she spent a month digging into Jackson's water problems and unearthing their root causes. 

"We found that while city and state leaders have abandoned civility and resorted to blaming each other for the current crisis, the foundation for these problems was laid more than a century ago," Le Coz said. "The system, which was flawed from the start, was cobbled together over the course of several administrations into a complicated operation with several moving parts. Much of the original infrastructure started reaching the end of its lifespan just as Jackson’s population began to decline and its wealthier white residents fled for the suburbs."

Jackson elected its first Black mayor in 1997. By then, the system was already in desperate need of repair. Since then, the price tag for improvements has ballooned while the city has been hit with a series of lawsuits and federal orders for multiple violations. 

"That's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of what is a complex story of population decline, poverty, racism, politics, mismanagement and theft," Le Coz said. "I hope you will read it in full."

💧 Read the investigation here.

More stories you shouldn't miss:

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Whether your yard is full of giant monsters courtesy of Home Depot or you're a lights-off house, I hope you have a happy and safe holiday.

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