• He is forced to consume the tap water that Jackson residents have been warned to stay away from.
• Due to a recent fire in the home next door, he is also without gas or power, which prevents him from boiling the water to make it safer.
• He says he thinks a devastating combination of aging infrastructure and climate change ultimately led to the latest collapse of Jackson’s water supply.

Marshall resides in west Jackson, a primarily black and underdeveloped area of the city, in the US state of Mississippi. He is forced to consume the tap water that Jackson residents have been warned to stay away from. The water runs brown when he opens the faucet.

He claims that it has been this way for nearly eight months and that he is compelled to drink it.

“Yes ma’am. I been drinking it.” He smiles when we ask whether it worries him. “I turn 70 later this month,” he says.

Since Marshall doesn’t own a vehicle, he is unable to travel to the locations where the National Guard is distributing water. Due to a recent fire in the home next door, he is also without gas or power, which prevents him from boiling the water to make it safer.

“Very seldom it’s pure. Sometimes it’s a little lighter, a little darker. In the bath tub when I first turn it on, it always comes out rust, then it gets lighter. But every time, the rust comes first.”

Jackson councilman Aaron Banks has lived in the Mississippi state’s capital for most of his life, and now represents a district that is more than 90% Black.

He says he thinks a devastating combination of aging infrastructure and climate change ultimately led to the latest collapse of Jackson’s water supply.

Volunteers have been handing out bottles of drinking water to Jackson residents

In 2020, when freezing temperatures caused Jackson’s water treatment facility to shut down, Mr Banks says his district went without water for nearly six weeks – far longer than the surrounding areas. The town’s infrastructure has struggled to keep up ever since.

“We have not gone a month without having a boil water notice or low to no water pressure in the last two years,” he says. “Unfortunately, that is something we have gotten used to as American citizens – nobody should be adapting to that type of quality of life.”

Mr. Banks claims that people of color have frequently been the ones who have been pushed to adapt. The councilman claims he has seen state funds go into the infrastructure of towns and areas near Jackson for years, but it hasn’t reached institutions like the city’s water treatment facility that are in dire need of it.

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