Less than 5,000 without water in Jackson

Fewer than 5,000 water customers were still without service Friday afternoon in Mississippi's capital city of Jackson — a development a top official called "positive progress" for the city of 160,000, where some residents have been without water for three weeks.

The city's public works director said almost 42,000 city water customers have now had their water restored. He said he hopes to see service restored to most customers in Jackson by Monday.

The water shortage in Jackson occurred after a winter storm passed through the region three weeks ago, freezing machinery at the water treatment plant. When it began to thaw, dozens of water mains broke.

The outage left people in the majority-Black city, where close to 30% of 160,000 residents live in poverty, scrambling to find water to flush toilets, bathe and drink. The National Guard was called in to assist at water distribution sites, where people waited for hours in lines of vehicles to fill buckets and bowls with water.

City workers are still repairing water main breaks. Around 70 have been patched during the last three weeks, according to a news release.

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said that the water crisis has been caused in part because of decades of neglect regarding the city's aging infrastructure. Parts of Jackson's water system are a century old, he said.

A major factor impacting the city's ability to update its system has been a rapidly declining tax base due to white flight. Jackson's tax base began crumbling decades ago, starting after the integration of public schools. The city was 60% white in 1970, according to U.S. census data. In 2021, it is more than 80% Black.