Anyway, you'd expect the federal government to be able to repair a water treatment facility in a tiny city within a few days.
The "crisis" referred to appears to mean the recent loss of pressure throughout the system, which happened after the boil water advisory, active since July 29th. The boil water advisory should be considered a crisis of its own, I agree, but the loss of pressure meant many could not get even basic washing and toilet use done, which made international news.
The article is written in a difficult to follow reverse chronological format, but it is clear from its contents that ~24 hours after the arrival of the Corps (at a time when other services were already working on the problem and had likely made big progress), pressure in the system was increased to about 86 psi and nearly the entire system had water supply again: the immediate, primary, news-worthy crisis was then resolved, and has since stayed resolved.
Beyond that, work has been done to achieve the higher target pressure desired (also done), get production up and clean out contaminated tanks and beds (mostly done), and to set things up for the full test needed to remove the advisory (not yet done, but anticipated to be soon).
The headline is a strange fact to pick out in all this, but it does seem to be essentially true.
From you news you might imagine they had some huge disaster that would take weeks to fix, but actually it's pure incompetence.
(This isn't a knock on the regulation--it actually makes a lot of sense. A loss of water pressure means that groundwater can seep into the water pipes where previously clean water was leaking into groundwater, and it will take a couple of days for any such intruded groundwater to be flushed out of the water pipes. This is merely me trying to point out that a boil water advisory being maintained after a pressure loss doesn't contradict the possibility that the problem has actually been fixed.)
My spouse was in a leadership position in a municipal water utility for several years. You have to make capital investments to maintain pumps, filtration systems and have operational funds to perform testing and repairs.
Municipal government often struggles with capital investment, especially in states that tightly regulate the ability of cities to bond or wherever the governor has the ability to control municipal authorities. There’s a “starve the beast” philosophy in some quarters that creates issues like this.
Money is usually the root cause. Incompetence is usually the result.
Another common dumb move is selling the water system to a private entity. Because governments are both more efficient and have a lower cost structure for raising capital, in the long run that leads to higher utility rates and deferred investment.
Chattanooga, TN has a similar size and no water crisis. As does dozens of other similarly sized towns. Other towns in Mississippi also don’t have the issue.
Water is entirely a municipal responsibility and Jackson is a horribly run city.
https://www.mississippifreepress.org/26791/no-efforts-to-rec...
The second article never alleges corruption. It does say Governor Reeves "[never spoke] to the mayor directly about the ongoing crisis." I'm not sure if the whole crisis is about the number of water operators, which it focuses on.
Sounds like a short timeframe to me?
Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
You're mistaking the tiny population of 150,000 or so as a proxy for it's size.