JACKSON, Miss. (Special) — Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves has declared a State of Emergency and activated the National Guard to help distribute potablewater in response to the collapsing public water system in the City of Jackson, which has been under a system-wide boil water notice for a month and has now lost pressure in most of the metro service area.
“The water is not drinkable,” Reeves said. “What I am focused on right now is ensuring that we get an incident command center set up at the facility. They will be at O.B. Curtis [Water Treatment [Plant], first thing [Tuesday] morning.
“They will work with the city personnel that are currently there, and we will assess what needs to be done to get the quantity of water flowing as quickly as humanly possible.”
The O.B. Curtis Water Plant is the city’s newest and main water treatment plant. A host of problems, including pump failures during the current flood event in central Mississippi, has forced operators to take the plant offline at a loss of 30 million gallons of treated water per day.
In the photo above, volunteers begin unloading pallets of bottled water for distribution in the Jackson area.
