The Only State Capital Where You Can’t Drink the Water

A summary of the Jackson Mississippi water crisis to date.

Last August, a flood took out the aging water system in Jackson, Mississippi, leaving nearly everyone in the City without water. Only a few months later, arctic weather broke so many pipes in the city that residents again lost access to water, some for nearly two weeks, continuing one of the worst water crises in American history.

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Practical Engineering is a YouTube channel about infrastructure and the human-made world around us. It is hosted, written, and produced by Grady Hillhouse. We have new videos posted regularly, so please subscribe for updates. If you enjoyed the video, hit that ‘like’ button, give us a comment, or watch another of our videos!

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This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.

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Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Pond5.
Tonic and Energy by Elexive is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Producer/Writer/Host: Grady Hillhouse
Editor: Wesley Crump
Production Assistant: Josh Lorenz
Script Editor: Ralph Crewe
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Graphics: Nebula Studios

[aksmth]

I worked for a civil engineering firm that had a long project on a small town's water system that was only billing 30% of their pumped water. They hired us to write up a rate report to try and raise the rates to their customers to make up for the shortfalls their utility system was having. Instead we recommended that we actually do a system audit, and if we couldn't find improvements then we'd have the strong evidence that they needed the rate improvement. The town council balked at our cost but agreed.

Within 3 months we found and repaired 3 big "hidden" main breaks that brought their billable water up closer to 50%, and after testing all their meters we found that only about 10% were giving actual readings and most of the rest were under-reporting. By the time we were done fixing all the broken mains and faulty equipment they were around 80% billable and didn't need to raise their rates. I remember the head of the Town Council being VERY surprised that fixing things for real worked better than the band-aid patches that their water/sewer/dog catcher town manager kept doing.

[Rorschach]

As a former resident of Mississippi, with family still living there, I can attest that corruption in Mississippi politics runs very very deep. Financial mismanagement is rampant.

[markbeyea]

As a professional engineer working in the Jackson area, I commend you for seeing the importance of this issue and covering it much better than any news media reports ever have. I think you reported most of the facts accurately and reported the story without trying to assign blame. Here is a fact you missed however. I believe the City of Jackson currently has only one professional engineer on staff. They have been critically short of engineers for years. Some exceptionally talented and dedicated engineers have served on the city staff during the nearly 30 years that I have been privileged to work with them, but they have almost all been lost to retirement, lack of pay, over work and lack of support. The Jackson water crisis illustrates the fact that engineered system need qualified engineers to oversee their operation and maintenance, or they will fail.

[Premier-Media-Group]

Boiling water is effective at eliminating pathogens, but does scant little for treating water for things like chemicals, heavy metals, or allergens.

[DiySciGuy]

As a resident of Mississippi, I’d like to say how accurately you depicted this. Much of the city of Jackson’s infrastructure is outdated and barely handling its population. A lack of effective public transportation and aging electrical and water utilities is turning the city into a madhouse. Plus I’d really like to say I enjoy all your videos. I LOVE Civil engineering projects and seeing the science and logistics of putting it all together. Great job on your channel, it’s one of my favorites on YouTube.

[andrekz]

Reminds me of an old saying, "Being poor is expensive." I hope Mississippi gets the help it needs

[TheWiseFool_]

I'm from and currently live in Mississippi. The root of this problem is the amount of corruption and theft going on inside the state and city government. It is something the people have been actively fighting for decades, especially since hurricane Katrina.

[watermanone]

Excellent video. I worked in the industry and your video is on target. One town I worked in had aprox. 30 % of treated water go out in leaks. I had a company come in and do late night examination with listening devices on the hydrants to locate the leaks. In several places the water went to streams or ponds undected. One lady's duck pond dried up when we repaired a major leak. She was not to happy. Great video and well done. Thanks

[MikeRutherfordNLN]

I've lived in Jackson most of my adult life. Along with the reasons stated for the under funding of the water system there was a 2010 electronic water meter contract given to Siemens where faulty meters caused wild inaccuracies in billing prompting the city to halt water bill collections. Personally our bi-monthly bill at one point said we owed $1700! One estimate I've seen says it cost the city $450 million while the city only was able to recoup the $90 million of the original contract from a settlement with Siemens.

[rodchallis]

Whenever there's civil engineering projects, people focus in hard on the bottom line: "What's it going to cost?" When the more relevant question is, "What's it going to cost NOT to do it?" When it comes to water infrastructure, we were taught that by Professors Cholera and Typhus a couple generations ago. They may have to come out of retirement to teach us again.

[cidercreekranch]

When a system, such as the water system in a city, has been knowingly neglected for years then such inaction rises to the level of criminal negligence.

[drasticfred]

I know how, mismanagement and corruption affects people, citizens and public infrastructure, because i live in Turkey. It's so sad to see those happened in Jackson, Mississippi. It's also an irony that it happened in a state named after second longest river in the entire World. Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink.

[dougkahl]

A mechanical engineer once told me that civil engineering was all about "dead things", things that don't move or interact. Your videos show exactly the opposite; dynamic systems that must change with the environment even if they prefer "slow changes". I just love your work.

[joshpulliam]

I’ve been in water and wastewater treatment for 15 years now. I really appreciate and enjoy this type of content. It it great to see this type of information being available to the public. Thank you Grady! Keep up the good work!

[nathanedwards]

Grady, me and my boys love your channel. We live in a rural area and would love to see an episode on gravel roads. The physics behind washboarding would be particularly interesting.

[spacemanspiff]

As a controls engineer in the water industry, this is a great overview of the responsibility the industry has, and an embarrassing reminder of how bad things can get. I interface with a lot of engineering firms for the design of water/wastewater facilities, and this channel does an excellent job at showing the concepts involved. Thank you.

[attr]

Being From East Mississippi we have always had Boil water warnings through out my life living there. It's not just the capital, it's a State wide issue that has been going on for years.

[houligan]

almost 20 years my summer job in college was working for the water district updating all of their valve diagrams. For the whole summer I rode out with a technician, verified the valve diagram, and updated the maps in AutoCAD as needed. It was actually pretty fun.

[jesserhodes]

I'm working on a house that has a sewage lift station down the block. Some maintenance was being done and I walked over and started talking to the workers. They were really nice and gave me a quick run through and explanation of how the system works. It smelled terrible but I've become so curious about the city infrastructures since finding your channel.

[ncubesays]

I live in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and it's wild to me that a capital city of a US state does not have drinkable tap water. I know that we have our issues with public utilities here so this is not coming from a high horse.