Arte.tv International Coverage of Jackson's ongoing water crisis

A few days before the mid-term elections, on November 8, a team from Arte Reportage went to Jackson, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, capital of the State of Mississippi. At the end of August, floods disrupted the operation of a water treatment plant essential for the city, but badly maintained for lack of money.

Faced with an emergency situation, this city in the South of the United States with an African-American majority, where the poverty rate is very high, spent several weeks without drinking water. This water crisis reveals the state of a country with aging infrastructure, a particularly staggering finding in the richest country in the world.

The Town Hall, run by a Democrat, denounces a flagrant lack of investment allocated to water management. The State of Mississippi, held by the conservatives of the Republican Party, denounces the negligence of the City and proposes to privatize the water to restore the network to working order.

In the meantime, daily life is turned upside down. Jackson is losing more and more people, its businesses are declining, young graduates are moving elsewhere. An explosive environment, which could lead to riots: left-wing movements are trying to mobilize the population around the defense of a quality public service for water. And the theses put forward at the national level by Bernie Sanders are making their way to the South of the United States.

Report by Vladimir Vasak (France, 2022) available until 20/10/2052