After nearly a month-long boil water advisory over turbidity, Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, was finally pushed to the edge when flooding altered the primary water treatment plant’s chemical balance and pressure in late August for the city of 165,000.
Residents and businesses began the struggle with Jackson’s O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant on August 29, when most lost access to municipal water to flush or drink, and had to largely rely on limited bottled water pickup sites.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the city, and it allowed Mississippi to tap into critical resources to respond to the crisis.
Water production has slowly begun to improve as tanks maintain their overnight margins, and water pressure climbs. Pumps out for repair are also starting to return.
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But while running water has largely returned, it remains undrinkable without boiling. O.B. Curtis needs two more rounds of clear samples to be able to remove the boil water notice.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves warned residents not to drink local water and has begun to further intervene in the crisis, creating an incident command centre and also activating the National Guard to help.
“This is a very different situation from a boil water notice,” Reeves explained at a press conference. “Until it is fixed, we do not have reliable running water at scale. The city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to flush toilets and to meet other critical needs,” he added at the height of the crisis.
The water pressure at the O.B. Curtis plant dropped by 50% overnight on August 31, when it went from 80 PSI to 40 PSI. Local officials said ideally the water pressure should be closer to 87 PSI, a number it was consistently reaching as of September 11.
During repairs, officials feared that aged pipes might burst as they tried to address the water pressure issues.
“Work continues in the plant today on both the membrane and conventional systems with city staff and mutual aid teams from Georgia and Florida rural water associations,” Jackson officials said in a September 4 statement. “The outlook continues to be positive. However, additional challenges as repairs and adjustments are made do leave potential for fluctuations in progress.”
Efforts to restart the water plant have been complicated by the failure of key water pumps in addition to the issues with water pressure and chemical imbalances from the flooding of the Pearl River. Plant operators received a temporary raw water pump that will increase the processing ability by 5 million gallons per day.
Stay updated on Jackson’s water improvements and disruption locations. https://t.co/xyL1NVbhTE
— City of Jackson Mississippi (@CityOfJxnMS) September 4, 2022
Controlled flare burning has been visible at the O.B. Curtis plant in recent days, as workers repair an ammonia leak and empty a leaking tank for repair.
Prior to the flooding, residents had been boiling water for a month due to the level of manganese combined with the use of lime at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant.
The J.H. Fewell Water Treatment Plant — the much older and smaller of the two plants — appears to still be providing some water to residents, though not enough for the city to run safely. Production has been boosted at the plant, but pressure issues persist system-wide.
Deeper Issues
Ongoing issues with the local water plants appear to go much deeper than the current flooding crisis reveals. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was recently critical of Jackson officials and their lack of zeal towards hiring a full roster of certified Class A water plant operators. They are short as many as five operators, and current staff have been working overtime regularly, according to a report the EPA released in July. The agency also noted that staffing issues were impacting routine and preventative maintenance on parts of the system.
“There are insufficient operators to consistently staff three shifts, seven days per week,” the EPA report states.
Following the report, on September 7, Jackson officials announced that two operators at the O.B. Curtis plant were issued provisional Class A Water Operator licenses by the Department of Health.
Additionally, in early 2020, the water system failed an EPA inspection, which found the drinking water had the potential to host harmful bacteria or parasites. Further, residents were without water for a month when pipes froze and burst during a 2021 winter storm.
More recently, in late July, Jackson officials announced that they had violated a surface water treatment rule. A previous inspection had determined a capacity deficiency in pumps as the result of a fire. Jackson officials said they missed the deadline to rectify the issue with the state department of health.
