Black business owners in Mississippi’s capital say the city’s broken water system poses dire costs for their bottom lines.
— have been made worse by inaction from Mississippi’s mostly white, conservative-dominated Legislature.Political leaders have not always been on the same page. Jackson’s Democratic mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, has blamed the water problems on decades of deferred maintenance, while Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has said they stem from mismanagement at the city level.
Last Monday the governor held a news conference about the crisis, and the mayor was not invited. Another was held later in the week where they both appeared, but Primm said it’s clear that the two are not in concert.Under normal circumstances, Labor Day weekend is a bustling time at Johnny T’s. The college football season brings out devoted Jackson State fans who watch away games on the bistro’s TVs or mosey over from the stadium after home games.
Even as revenue plummeted, Tierre’s expenses increased. He has been spending $300 to $500 per day on ice and bottled water, not to mention canned soft drinks, tonic water and everything else that would typically be served out of a soda gun. He brings staff in a few hours earlier than usual so they can get a head start on boiling water to wash dishes and stacking the extra soda cans.“You have to pass some of this off to the consumer,” Tierre said. “Now your Coke is $3, and there are no refills.
At a water distribution site in south Jackson this week, area resident Lisa Jones brought empty paint buckets to fill up so her family could bathe. In a city with crumbling infrastructure, Jones said she felt trapped. “Everybody can’t move right now. Everyone can’t go to Madison, Flowood, Canton and all these other places,” she said, naming three more affluent suburbs. “If we could, trust me, it would be a dark sight: Houses would be boarded up street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood.”Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
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