BILL CRAWFORD: Nor any drop to drink, but blame aplenty

Published 11:00 am Sunday, September 11, 2022

Ancient citizens of Jackson can relate to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. Whether adrift at sea or aground in Jackson, Coleridge’s epic line applies – “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

An ill-fated albatross did in the mariner. An equally ill-fated figurative albatross did in Jackson’s water. The media just cannot determine which bird(s) to blame.

W. Ralph Eubanks, visiting professor of English and Southern Studies at Ole Miss, blamed the “White Republican supermajority” and raged against these “remnants of Jim Crow” on CNN.

“It is no surprise the state government of Mississippi has ignored the city’s problems with its water system to the point of absolute failure of the system” he said. “How could a state ignore the needs of the residents of its capital city and allow things to deteriorate to this point? The answer as I see it is simple: racism. Jackson is a Black majority city and Mississippi is governed by a White Republican majority that refuses to invest in Jackson because of who lives there and who governs it.”

Wyatt Emmerich, publisher of the Northside Sun newspaper, blamed Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba for “one of the most colossal municipal government failures in the history of our country” and called for his resignation.

“It’s not like this crisis sprang out of nowhere,” he wrote in his biting editorial. “On March 30, 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a scathing report of the Jackson water system. It listed dozens of major problems and gross understaffing. That was the time for Mayor Lumumba to take swift and immediate action. But he did not.”

“There is no possible way for Lumumba to blame anyone but himself. He has been in office five years, during which our water plants have been allowed to fall into total disrepair. Complex systems were not maintained. Software wasn’t updated. Automatic systems failed and were replaced by impossible attempts at manual controls by understaffed and untrained staff.”

WLBT TV published commentary blaming city government. “We have shared many times the list of core functions of city government. Providing reliable, safe water is included in that list of priorities. Sadly, Jackson has failed miserably in fulfilling that responsibility due to a lack of leadership, lack of management, and lack of maintenance.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s only Black congressman and chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security appeared to divide the blame. The state bears some of blame for neglecting Jackson for decades, he told Mississippi Today. But if the capital city cannot properly run its water system, “I would not be in favor of the city being given back the authority to run it.”

Fortunately, Gov. Tate Reeves and President Joe Biden declared emergencies to bring in state and federal experts to solve immediate concerns. No doubt a whole rookery of blamed albatrosses will circle Jackson before long-term fixes can be implemented.

“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’”– Genesis 4:9.

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.