Heather McTeer Toney worked to clean up discolored tap water as mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, before serving as the Environmental Protection Agency’s southeast regional administrator from 2014 to 2017. Now she works on environmental justice issues nationwide for the Environmental Defense Fund. She said many majority-minority communities lack consistent access to clean water.

“Any community that is suffering from lack of infrastructure maintenance is dealing with the same problem, maybe just on a different scale,” Toney said. “But across the nation, with .... poor communities that are often Black, brown, Indigenous and on the frontlines of the climate crisis, we see the same thing happening over and over again.” 

Hendricks and Toney blame systemic racism for government disinvestment in communities of color. Maisie Brown calls Jackson’s troubles “the product of environmental racism.” 

“I don’t think we realize how deeply ingrained racism is in all of our structures and systems, including infrastructure,” said Brown, a 20-year-old student at Jackson State University who was born and raised in the city.

Brown is a member of the Mississippi Students Water Crisis Advocacy Team, a group of about 30 students delivering water to residents who are disabled, elderly or don’t have vehicles. That’s what relief has looked like in Jackson — the people most affected doing what they can to help each other. But the limited handouts each day haven't been enough, forcing people to buy water in stores. 

The two cases Wooten and nearly 500 others picked up at the site in south Jackson one day contained just under nine gallons (30 liters). That's less than 3% of the roughly 300 gallons (1,136 liters) that the EPA says the average American family uses each day. 

Needed improvements at the city's two treatment plants include replacing ineffective pumps, leaky filters, faulty membranes and corroded pipes; removing accumulated sludge and hiring enough qualified staff to properly manage the system. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a Democrat, has pleaded for patience while seeking state and federal help, saying such fixes could cost billions of dollars that the city doesn’t have.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said while visiting Jackson that he wants the city to get its fair share of federal money flowing to the state.

Reeves, a Republican, has not said how much Mississippi should spend on solving this problem. The legislature directed $400 million of federal pandemic relief funds toward water infrastructure upgrades around the state, but it’s unclear how much Jackson will receive because cities are still applying for money. "We cannot perfectly predict what may go wrong with such a broken system in the future,” Reeves said Thursday.

Without reliable funding streams, many Jackson residents don’t expect to see consistently drinkable water anytime soon.

Karla McCullough, 46, is a Black woman and Jackson native who runs a charity that helped organize the distribution site where Wooten got her water. She told the AP that the city's residents have experienced some level of water scarcity their entire lives.

“I want to be hopeful and optimistic,” McCullough said. “In my lifetime, I may not see the infrastructure fixed and it restored to a point where there are not any water issues. But my hope is that my son and his children won’t have to deal with this.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content