Thursday, September 22, 2022

As the world sadly witnessed, the city of Jackson, the capital of the state of Mississippi, was without potable water for nearly a month. This crisis placed more than 160,000 people into a critical state of emergency. Cooperation Jackson and many community groups responded immediately with water relief distributions that served tens of thousands throughout this crisis. These buttressed the water distribution efforts of the local, state and federal governments. However, despite how critical this initiative was, it was woefully inadequate. It did not, and could not meet all of the needs in the community. It also created a major waste problem, as the city isn’t currently doing mass scale recycling.

What clearly emerged from this crisis is that the people of Jackson need an alternative. The long suffering communities of Jackson can not and should not continue to wait on State and Federal redress to repair the water system. Jacksonians have been living with an inadequate water treatment and delivery system for decades, with major water system infractions going back to 1989, if not earlier. In order to address these inadequacies, it is imperative that we build a practical community based solution to the water crisis that grassroots, civil society forces like Cooperation Jackson can implement ourselves.

The Solution

We need your support in building community based water catchment, treatment and delivery systems. Our aim is to create a critical mass of these systems at various community centers and to network them to be able to address future water crises, and further the enablement of greater sustainability in our community.

Our plan is to take the next 3 months (October through December) to demonstrate proof of concept on the facilities of the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust, which are stewarded by Cooperation Jackson. The design(s) that will emerge from this practicum will constitute our minimum viable product, and be used to build out this network starting with allied organizations and institutions throughout the city in 2023.

Special thanks to our comrades from Just Construction for coming down and lending us some knowledge, skill, education, training, and labor.