A video of a running faucet in Jackson, Mississippi, went viral for capturing the murky state of the water supply.
Reporter Molly Minta captured the video of brown water spilling out of her faucet and posted it to Twitter on Friday. She has since taken a sample of the water to be tested.
Severe rainstorms last month caused flooding along the Pearl River, contaminating a reservoir with raw water. When the system started to stall due to the raw water, it could not replenish the water towers fast enough. This caused a major drop in water pressure and allowed untreated groundwater to enter into the water pipes.
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Minta said her neighbors believed their water was safe since they all lived in Belhaven, which is far from the affected reservoir and near a water plant. A manager of several properties in the area confirmed that many of the units were affected by “weak coffee” colored water.
The state has implemented boil water notices in Jackson, Franklin County’s Wright’s Campground, and Pontotoc County’s Curtis Sudduth Mobile Home Park. Its earliest notice began in March of this year.
“Imagine if these views were all raised voices, calling their reps and saying ‘do something or I will vote against you’?” former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo tweeted Friday. Minta’s original tweet received over 147,000 likes and 45,000 retweets.
“Meanwhile, the Pentagon blows through $83,300,000 of taxpayer money every single hour,” the official account of watchdog organization Public Citizen tweeted.
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Mississippi is slated to receive $429 million over five years allocated to water treatment under the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was passed last fall. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba estimated that the city needs a minimum of $1 billion to remedy its water distribution system and billions more to fix all of its water system’s long-term ailments.
