In August 2022, Jackson entered a state of emergency after flooding overwhelmed the city’s fragile infrastructure, leaving residents without running water to drink, cook, brush their teeth, or even flush their toilets. Periods of low pressure and subpar service were nothing new for Jacksonians, 27 percent of whom live in poverty and 82 percent of whom are Black. They have been deprived of resources by the state legislature, which is overwhelmingly white and conservative, for decades—forever, really.
When Henifin first took over from city officials, under the auspices of the newly minted utility provider JXN Water, many in Jackson were simply relieved to see some investment in their perennially neglected infrastructure. Just a year before, Mississippi lawmakers had withheld the $1.8 billion the state received from the American Rescue Plan Act from the capital city, despite the mayor’s urgent request that the governor disburse the funds to cover immediate repairs. When the infrastructure finally collapsed, Congress allocated a combined $600 million specifically for recovering Jackson’s water system.
Downtown Jackson tends to be desolate. Many state agencies have moved their headquarters to surrounding suburbs at the behest of the legislature. But just after lunchtime on June 16, residents flooded into the federal courthouse for a status conference on the water overhaul.
This was an about-face that left Henifin feeling somewhat betrayed by the council members, who he says have treated him with Southern hospitality in the past. Henifin felt that city officials were using the stipulated order for “political cover,” an opportunity to curry favor with their constituents without having to make the tough calls municipal governance requires. Under the terms of the order, Henifin only needs approval from Judge Wingate to carry out decisions on Jackson’s water system. “You’ve got a federal judge running the show, and he clearly has the ability to raise the rates based on the stipulated order,” he said. “I think they took the easy way out.”
For much of the public hearing, which extended into a second day, Judge Wingate and Ted Henifin lectured the cost-strapped citizens on why a rate hike was unavoidable to cover daily costs and debt obligations. “I’m not really apologetic about charging what it costs to get water to people and sewer away from people,” Henifin told me the week before. People have to be “willing to pay back” to get the water system on track after decades of underinvestment in infrastructure.
Floyd is the director of programs and community-led governance initiatives at People’s Advocacy Institute, a Jackson-based nonprofit. Earlier this spring, People’s Advocacy Institute and the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign filed a motion requesting that the Judge modify the Interim Stipulated Order to require more public accountability from Henifin and set out a timeline to return the water system to city officials. “Our water system must remain publicly owned and locally governed,” Floyd wrote in an announcement of the intervention. “Anything less invites the same political forces that starved our infrastructure in the first place.”
Ultimately, the EPA wrote off these concerns, responding that the agency “generally does not comment on proposed state legislation.” However, at the height of the water crisis, the agency filed an investigation into whether Mississippi’s state legislature violated the Civil Rights Act by intentionally depriving the majority-Black city of access to the $75 million in water funding allocated to Mississippi under Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Those concerns were written off, as well. “Although Jackson falls on the lower end of per capita funding,” the EPA decided, “there was no significant relationship between loan amounts per person and race over time.”
The federal relief package stipulated $450 million through a state revolving-loan fund that was specifically designated for “capital projects” and $150 million of more flexible spending for “technical assistance.” (Henifin told me that money has been protected from federal budget cuts.) As Henifin settled into Jackson and started making decisions to address the crumbling infrastructure, the $150 million drained quickly—and the $450 million was tied up. JXN Water still needed to cover its operating expenses, so it raised the rate by 13 percent and tacked on a $40 availability fee. The hike didn’t help ingratiate Henifin in a city where the median income is $43,000—around 10 percent of his salary as third-party manager.
The feud reached a fever pitch after Lumumba’s letter, and soon the two men were sitting for dueling interviews with the Mississippi Free Press to explain their side of the rift. Henifin joked that he and the mayor couldn’t stand to sit in the same room as one another. At the heart of their dispute was a disagreement about the future of Jackson’s water. Lumumba was concerned that Henifin’s plan to use federal funds to retire the city’s debt and return the system to solvency was essentially fattening the calf for the state to take over under a regional authority. Henifin suggested that the city officials didn’t have the technical expertise or the capacity to oversee their own infrastructure.
Harvey Johnson Jr., the first Black Mayor of Jackson, told me this is one of the greatest misconceptions about the city’s water infrastructure. While he was in office—he served as mayor between 1997 and 2005 and then again from 2009 to 2013—the city of Jackson invested roughly $150 million in water and sewer-related projects. Johnson repeatedly warned that the aging infrastructure needed to be addressed, but the state only agreed to loan the city $6 million.
Johnson has been outspoken against the state legislature’s power grab and history of starving the capital city. After the water crisis, he outlined how a shrinking tax base as the result of white flight and the discretion taken from the city to direct local tax dollars exacerbated Jackon’s infrastructure issues in Jackson State University’s Journal of Rural and Urban Research.
It’s a pattern that is repeating across the South, where Republican legislatures attempt to snatch assets from Democratic strongholds, most of which are cities with majority-Black populations. Over the last 12 years, Republican legislatures have tried to take over their state’s major airport in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. Preemption bills, where conservative state legislatures seek to roll back progressive local policies and grab municipal assets, surged across the country in 2020 in response to the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
When the status hearing resumed on the second day, Judge Wingate announced that he would hold off on a decision regarding the rate hike. In early June, Jackson elected a new mayor: the longtime state Senator John Horhn, who ran on a platform promising to use his relationships with legislators to finally improve conditions for the city. Wingate would give the new administration a moment to get up to speed but said his “pen is itching to move on this matter.” (Horhn was sworn in July 1.)
During the height of the crisis, community organizations banded together to provide mutual aid for a city that had been abandoned. Floyd joined the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition to distribute cases of bottled water to residents. “Mississippi does this a lot,” Floyd said. “They cut services and then they lean on community groups and churches to do the job that they should do.”
It frustrates Floyd that those overseeing the water system have downplayed residents’ concerns and met their skepticism with condescension. While she is not a water expert, it only takes common sense to know that when the bathwater comes out brown with particles floating around, you shouldn’t use it to bathe your kids, let alone drink it. To be told otherwise by JXN Water is an insult to residents’ intelligence.
After being appointed, Henifin got an apartment in Jackson. He often travels for work and tries to get home to Virginia for a long weekend at least twice a month. But, he tells me, he spends 20 to 25 days out of each month in the city. He claims to be “in the community quite a bit. Largely shopping, grocery shopping, going to dinner, going to lunch.”
Floyd says that she and the residents of Jackson have seen the fight for their right to clean water through many mayoral administrations and since long before Henifin showed up. “Water is not political,” she said. “Fighting for children to have a bright and beautiful future that they deserve here is not political to me.”
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