Even Mississippi lawmaker feels strain of Jackson water woes

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — In Mississippi's capital city, where intermittent periods without running water have become a fact of life for residents, a new disruption to the long-troubled water system persists just days before lawmakers are set to arrive for the state's 2023 legislative session.

Amid frigid weather that upended infrastructure across the Deep South, pipes in Jackson broke and the city’s water distribution system failed to produce adequate pressure. Crews have spent days working to identify leaks, but pressure still hasn’t been fully restored and a boil water notice remained in place Friday.

City leaders said the water system remains vulnerable to weather-related disruptions, and Jackson-area legislators face the prospect of returning home from the Capitol building each evening without access to water in their homes.

Democratic state Rep. Ronnie Crudup Jr., who has represented south Jackson since 2019, was preparing for the Legislature's upcoming return to session on January 3. Then, on Dec. 24 — just three months after a breakdown in Jackson's water system left many in the city of about 150,000 without water to drink, cook, bathe and flush toilets — it happened again.

On Christmas Eve, after the last of Crudup’s running water went down the drain, his spirits sunk along with it.

“I’m normally very optimistic in pretty much all situations, but this latest water situation is getting the best of me,” Crudup wrote in a Dec. 26 social media post. “Y’all pray for me and my Jackson neighbors. I know if I’m struggling, others are also.”

Local officials are contending with an “old, crumbling system that continues to offer challenge after challenge,” said Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. The city's latest water woes follow a 2021 winter storm that left people...