Jackson, MS tap water has high levels of lead contamination. So the usual poor-country method of making the water safe by boiling it is not effective.
Safe-to-drink tap water is one indicator of a developed country. Is the US regressing in this respect? Safe-to-drink tap water also reduces overall costs of water, because users do not have to buy bottled water or (for microbial contamination) boil the water.
Sad - I hope they can fix the system. There’s some great folks down there (I used to go regularly for work) and likely will again at some point. And I imagine drank some of the water.
He also said there was no constitutional right to “truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
“The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt wrote.
Yes, but.
Flint, Michigan. What a travesty that was. It took outsiders who worked together to push … HARD … to get the problem taken care of. The health issues, including learning deficits, linger. We are not the civil society we like to think we are.
This makes me so angry!
Multiple sources say Jackson MS water is safe to drink now, as some of the issues of the past have been addressed. The lawsuit from above, with the reprehensible court opinion, was based on 2010-13 water sample results. (Note there have been issues with undrinkable water since then in Jackson, including a 2022 crisis that even impacted Jackson State U students.) And separately, many houses still have lead water pipes.
Lead pipes going into homes is an ongoing crisis in many areas. Our infrastructure needs a huge overhaul, and families simply do not have the financial means to pay for this. It’s a crisis that will only worsen. Community grants will be key to resolution, but we are cutting back on that type of funding. We really need to rethink how we can fix health problems like this, because the long term effects of not doing so will be more costly than dealing with them.
Lead exposure in young children is also associated with an increased risk of criminal behavior as adolescents and young adults. Being affected in this way results in enormous costs borne by the person, crime victims, and everyone in society who has to pay for police, courts, and incarceration and/or probation/parole supervision costs, as well as loss of economic productivity that one might have had doing honest work.
In 2021, the EPA updated their regulations and now require all water utilities to create a detailed inventory of their water service line materials & notify customers with unknown or lead piping of their water connection status.
Our City is currently going through this. We did our inventory a couple of years ago. If you had lead service lines, or they weren’t sure, you got a letter. Now they are going through all of their unknowns. It was a fairly hefty number of customers - I want to say 20-30%? Oddly, we did not get a letter - our house was built in 1910.
Ever since our nasty algae bloom about 18 months after the coal ash spill, I don’t trust our water. Every now and then it will stink like rotting meat or a strong chemical smell. I cook with it, but I don’t drink it in large quantities.
Just curious, but what coal ash spill are you referring to?