Jackson, MS Water Crisis

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Not sure how much people have been paying attention to this, but from a 5 minute search, it seems like this is going to be a real [expletive] show: both politically but more importantly to the residents that are affected.

Going to ignore the political aspect, though, there's a lot to it.

The water situation itself seems to be a conglomeration of
1. putting a water treatment plant in a flood prone area; not sure when it was built, what changes have been made since it was built, etc. But, obviously, don't put the place you make drinking water in a place where a flood will contaminate your water and damage your plant. This is just stupid.
2. Lack of qualified employees. Probably because of issue 1. What competent/qualified person would choose to work at a plant that's destined for failure? It would be like a doctor wanting to work at a hospital where the floor was a bunch of rusty nails, point side up no less.
3. And, again, a complete degradation of equipment due to issue 1 but also just a lack of maintenance.

[Gashouse]

It's definitely a bad situation, and certainly there are multiple significant contributions.

It's not too uncommon to put a major public infrastructure facility adjacent to the river. Water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants are often there. But it looks like there isn't a certified levee around this treatment plant. Locally, the Twin Cities has a major wastewater treatment plant that would be in the Miss R floodplain, but there are certified levees adjacent to it. Similarly, I know the Des Moines drinking water plant is in the floodplain and former coworkers are working on a big project to improve flood protection there.

Surely many more things could have been done at both state and local level. If there is a lack of funding, there are plenty of federal grants to help pay for flood protection and making sure basic human needs are being met - or Senators and Reps can help secure direct funding. That said, local planning and O&M is key to identifying specific needs and making those requests. So, local folks should have been much more on top of it, but since it's the state capital, state folks should have been had more of a clue, too.

[Arthur Dent]

Have you found any good technical reporting on the problem? I’ve only found bits and pieces.

Is the flood issue actually that it damaged the plant? My impression (haven’t seen much detail) was that the problem was that flooding changed the composition of the source water degrading the plant’s yield. Also, apparently there’s some issue with failing pumps, probably indicative of poor maintenance/lack of needed investment.

The flooding induced water quality issue happened in Austin in 2018, though it didn’t last that long.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/22 ... -flooding/

[Joe Shlabotnik]

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=62085

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I have found very little technical reporting @Arthur Dent @Gashouse

Agreed, it's okay to put plants next to the river, but they need to be protected from flooding, either with levees or better yet by building up higher.

Take all this fwiw because I haven't designed a water treatment plant since my senior project in college almost 20 years ago.

But, there are multiple stages to treating water. It's not step 1. bring water in step 2. magic step 3. send water out. Typically there is screening/large filtration that gets rid of debris, then settlement to get rid of heavier silt/dirt/rocks that get through the screening. Then UV lights to kill off living organisms. Then I get confused, but there's some further work done to it, but in the end you should have pretty clean water that can be tested and then chemicals are added which I think is regulated by EPA through the Dept of Health. Then, it's pumped out to the municipality through pipes (which get [expletive] in them as time passes, and 100 year old lead pipes are probably not the most sanitary thing to be pumping water through, but I digress).

It sounds like there's a plethora of failures all compounding. At a minimum, the pumps quit working a month or so ago, so they were already on backup pumps and reduced pressure in the system. The backup pumps were damaged by the flood. It also sounds like there was further damage to the plant though who knows which phase of treatment that affected, if not multiple. Further, from what I've seen, they do have new pumps in place to replace the backup pumps (backup pumps to the backup pumps) which has gotten some of the pressure back in the system but because either treatment process is broken or because the reservoir is tainted due to flooding, there is still a boil order.

Reservoirs shouldn't take that long to return to a state they can provide treatable water. So, if people are calling for extended outage, which it seems most are, it's likely damage to one or more steps of the treatment process.

There are multiple examples, like austin that you mention, where flooding at the reservoir affects the water quality and can in turn impact the end product. Plants aren't designed to handle the worst water quality imaginable ever. There are limitations on what they can do. Another example is lakes turning over. When that happens, typically once a year or so, often times the drinking water turns a little murky which is a byproduct, iirc, of more sediment than the plant is designed to remove being present. As such, a little sediment gets through turning the water brownish. But, the chemicals remain the same as inert dirt more/less doesn't affect it too much. So, while maybe not the most appealing drinking water, it's perfectly safe.

[Arthur Dent]

If people are calling for extended outage, which it seems most are, it's likely damage to one or more steps of the treatment process.

Yeah, which is why I’d like to hear some more complete technical explanation. The only thing definitely reported as damaged is pumps. I have zero experience in this area, but it’s hard to believe damaged pumps could lead to a really long outage. Pumps are not some kind of rare good. Might even be able to bring in trailer based pumps or something temporarily if they can be integrated.

[heyzeus]

They were running on backup pumps for unknown reasons (the main pumps have failed) since at least July. Then the floods came and damaged the backup pumps. It's a sad and pathetic situation.

Sounds like there's plenty of blame to go around. The poverty of Mississippi and Jackson are a big problem to start with. Both the state and the city have massively underfunded water infrastructure. Apparently the state only budgets $75 mil per year for this; the cost to replace the main pumps and other infrastructure for the city's water treatment plant is $200mil. The political realities of MS are part of it; Governor Tater gives money to the communities that vote for him (ie, not Jackson, which is 80% black), not to mention funneling federal aid to Brett Favre for speeches he didn't even give. But there are huge problems at the City too. Jackson has no real tax base so the property taxes alone aren't enough to keep the infrastructure, and I have no idea why the City hasn't done bond issuance to finance the water plant and seek state and federal aid/grant money for underserved communities. Like, at any point over the previous decade(s).

[Leroy]

Kind of amazing we can get all the bottled water we want to Iraq and Afghanistan but there isn't enough to go around in Jackson Mississippi.

[vinsanity]

Kind of amazing we can get all the bottled water we want to Iraq and Afghanistan but there isn't enough to go around in Jackson Mississippi.

There are established supply lines, coordinated by a single entity who's entire focus is coordination for the military.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

If people are calling for extended outage, which it seems most are, it's likely damage to one or more steps of the treatment process.

Yeah, which is why I’d like to hear some more complete technical explanation. The only thing definitely reported as damaged is pumps. I have zero experience in this area, but it’s hard to believe damaged pumps could lead to a really long outage. Pumps are not some kind of rare good. Might even be able to bring in trailer based pumps or something temporarily if they can be integrated.

That was my initial thought as well. Though the more I think about it, I’m not so sure these types of pumps that can spit out 10-50 mgpd are just laying around. We have a client currently waiting a year for a couple pumps capable of boosting pressure from the base of a tower to an adjacent subdivision. (Large subdivision). So maybe it is just an inability to find pumps capable of handling this type of out put.