EPA faults Mississippi state communications on water risks ahead of Jackson crisis

Mississippi’s state health department did not adequately enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act in Jackson, contributing to the 2022 crisis that left 150,000 residents without drinking water, according to a report released Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The OIG found that annual inspections by the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) between 2015 and 2021 did not properly document inadequacies in Jackson’s water system or properly notify the city of those issues.

“As a result, the EPA did not have a comprehensive understanding of the extent of the management and operational issues at Jackson’s system,” the report states. “The MSDH oversight failures obscured Jackson’s long-standing challenges, allowed issues to compound over time, and contributed to the system’s eventual failure.”

The report also found that the state failed to report two Safe Drinking Water Act violations in 2016 and 2017 in a timely manner and took no formal enforcement actions for more than four years beginning in September 2018. As a result, the city had no violations listed from 2012 to 2017 and could not be flagged as an enforcement priority for the EPA.

The report also found that on one occasion, in July 2015, samples collected by the state showed lead levels past the threshold at which action must be taken, but the state did not notify Jackson of the elevated levels until the following January.

The OIG report recommends that the agency develop a method to ensure sanitary surveys are adequate, and for the agency’s assistant administrator for water to update EPA guidance. It further recommends developing guidance specific to the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA has agreed with all of the recommendations.

The August 2022 crisis began after flooding of the Pearl River knocked the city’s biggest water treatment plant out of commission, leaving some residents without clean water for months. The capital city was once majority-white, but after federal desegregation in the 1960s, large portions of its white population left for the suburbs, depleting its tax base.

Since then, it has frequently been the site of political standoffs between its predominantly Black and Democratic leadership and the state’s white, Republican leaders. Following the 2022 crisis, the EPA referred the city to the Justice Department, leading to the appointment of a third-party manager.

The Hill has reached out to the MSDH for comment.

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