The governor of Mississippi said he's dispatching the National Guard and more tanker trucks to the state's capital city to bring an end to a water catastrophe that emerged following severe winter storms that encircle the community's aging infrastructure.
Many inhabitants of Jackson, a town of over 160,000 people, have been struggling for over a week to secure enough water to manage basic demands, officials said.
As he waited in line at a local high school to find water out of a tanker truck, Alfred Anderson Jr. summed up the feelings that he said many Jackson taxpayers have:"This is pitiful and a shame."
"We pay all this money... and we've to come out here, the majority of these individuals, and wait to attempt to get stuff to flush your toilets andyou understand, do your hygiene materials and whatever," Anderson told ABC affiliate channel WAPT in Jackson.
Casandra Woody, yet another Jackson resident waiting at precisely the same line for water,'' said the situation"is sad."
"I'm just fed up," Woody told WAPT because she saw citizens fill up as many containers that may fit in their automobiles.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said aid is on the way into the fighting residents of Jackson, in which Reeves occurs to live.
"I have also activated the National Guard to complete the assignment, and they will arrive early tomorrow (Wednesday). We will restore clean water for those of Jackson!"
Reeves noted that Jackson is just one of many Mississippi cities recovering from electric and water emergencies.
Charles Williams, the city's director of public works, told the Jackson City Council on Tuesday that water ought to be fully restored at the end of this week. But Williams said that as water pressure was gradually increased a new problem has arisen -- broken water mains throughout the community. He said in recent days, city work crews have reacted to fix at least 20 water main breaks.
"We had to buy some equipment so as to get where we are right now," Williams stated. "A lot of our equipment froze up because we couldn't get over 32 (levels )."
The city's water treatment plant was pumped off when left handed winter storms swept through the South last week bringing snow and snow below-freezing temperatures resulting in widespread power outages.
Williams reported that at one stage a week, pressure from the city's water system fell to 32 pounds per square inch. On Tuesdayhe said the water pressure in the system was around 67 PSI which he hopes workers can find the pressure up to 80 to 85 PSI at the end of Wednesday.
Residents are asked to boil their water before drinking as well as the town is setting more locations where residents can go to get clean water.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba has become the target of criticism from his constituents and town council members for his handling of this water crisis and for not getting the state moving quickly enough to help mend the circumstance.
But Lumumba said the catastrophe was an"act of God" that exposed the town's crumbling infrastructure that he said was neglected for a long time.
Reeves agreed, stating in a news conference on Tuesday that the challenges to Jackson's water method"were created literally 30, 40, 50 years of negligence and dismissing the challenges of their pipes and the machine "
"That 50 decades of deferred maintenance isn't something which we are going to correct in the next six to eight hours," Reeves said.
