DOJ appointee releases new plan for ‘tenuous’ Jackson water

The interim manager appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice to reform the troubled water system in Mississippi’s capital city released a new financial plan Friday to change the way Jackson bills for water and spend hundreds of millions of federal relief funds paying down the system’s debt.

The plan would relieve the water system of its debt and introduce a new billing model that would become effective in the budget year that begins on Oct. 1. The proposed reforms would allow Jackson to pay for the costs of improving and operating a water system that is in such disrepair it could fail again at any moment, according to Ted Henifin, the interim water manager.

“I’ve got to tell you, I could walk out of here right now and lose the system. It’s that tenuous,” Henifin said at a Friday news conference. “We’ve done a lot to improve this system, but it might fail tomorrow.”

Henifin said that Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba called him in a panic earlier Friday because he had lost water in his home. The mayor was worried the system had failed again. Repeated breakdowns have caused many in the city of about 150,000 to go days and weeks at a time without safe running water.