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@@alaric_ Heh, someone forgot about Austin Texas where where we've had two major incidents. Where our water went Clam and where we had a facility break down and make the water undrinkable.
I worked for a civil engineering firm that had a long project on a small town's water system that was only billing 30% of their pumped water. They hired us to write up a rate report to try and raise the rates to their customers to make up for the shortfalls their utility system was having. Instead we recommended that we actually do a system audit, and if we couldn't find improvements then we'd have the strong evidence that they needed the rate improvement. The town council balked at our cost but agreed. Within 3 months we found and repaired 3 big "hidden" main breaks that brought their billable water up closer to 50%, and after testing all their meters we found that only about 10% were giving actual readings and most of the rest were under-reporting. By the time we were done fixing all the broken mains and faulty equipment they were around 80% billable and didn't need to raise their rates. I remember the head of the Town Council being VERY surprised that fixing things for real worked better than the band-aid patches that their water/sewer/dog catcher town manager kept doing.
For larger towns and cities you get the compound problem of people just not bothering to pay the water bill. Amnesty periods are so long and shutoff times far in the future that you can get years of water without paying and then a whole other infrastructure needs to be set up to track down delinquencies.
As a former resident of Mississippi, with family still living there, I can attest that corruption in Mississippi politics runs very very deep. Financial mismanagement is rampant.
yeah, based on the video, there seems to be some systematic issues that need corrections, inspections and monitoring needs to be stricter and people need more accountability
@@Bonzi_Buddy "let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone". And Mr. Buddy replied, "Hey, Jesus, I'm him, get out of my way so I can start throwing".
@@stevechance150 Jackson, Mississippi has an average household income of $39,969. The US Average household income is $70,784. So yes, this puts the city at a disadvantage when it comes to tax revenue to pay for much needed upgrades. They become dependent on state and federal politics where communities that do not have that baggage do not have to worry about that. Even so, state and federal agencies can't toss money at them because these cities are woefully corrupt and mismanage such funds...typically in the use of their politically connected contractors or appointing their friends as bureaucrats to head those agencies. That just results in more corruption and wasteful spending. I'm not sure what is up with the Jesus stuff. Why don't you include some useless scripture there like it means something as well, religious wacko.
As a professional engineer working in the Jackson area, I commend you for seeing the importance of this issue and covering it much better than any news media reports ever have. I think you reported most of the facts accurately and reported the story without trying to assign blame. Here is a fact you missed however. I believe the City of Jackson currently has only one professional engineer on staff. They have been critically short of engineers for years. Some exceptionally talented and dedicated engineers have served on the city staff during the nearly 30 years that I have been privileged to work with them, but they have almost all been lost to retirement, lack of pay, over work and lack of support. The Jackson water crisis illustrates the fact that engineered system need qualified engineers to oversee their operation and maintenance, or they will fail.
This is interesting. My family was considering Jackson as part of a major move for us. I’m an engineer and was doing a little research and thought it wasn’t a good place for my career. On the other hand, maybe it is.
I just looked up jobs in Jackson. The city of Jackson is hiring a Senior Civil Engineer for water and the advertisement says pay is $52k to $63k. That’s almost half what I make right now as a manager of public works at a smaller town. Cost of living is cheap there, but they need to get real.
@@ImpulseAudioSpeakers Wow! Thanks for that info. That is less than starting engineer salary in Atlanta, Ga... And Atlanta isn't know for high engineering pay.
Thank you for saying that. I am in Ohio.. the train explosion with 15 different chemicals and boiling water does nothing.. we are suffering here.. and I'm not in the town it happened in, but it's affected the entire Ohio River!
@Saved By JESUS! Live 15 minutes away and lemme tell you, as someone who drinks a lot of water, this sucks. The water already wasn't the safest, but with this train, I'm going though water bottles like crazy m, and it sucks
@@katwilliams2950 I've seen other videos on UA-cam showing how to distill water at home. But even with a regular distiller it takes about 4 hours to get a gallon. I got one for about 200 bucks a couple years ago right before my city lost power to the water plants during the freezing weather. It definately helped. 😆 they mentioned the big freeze I was taking about around 19:00 minutes right after I posted this comment.
As a resident of Mississippi, I’d like to say how accurately you depicted this. Much of the city of Jackson’s infrastructure is outdated and barely handling its population. A lack of effective public transportation and aging electrical and water utilities is turning the city into a madhouse. Plus I’d really like to say I enjoy all your videos. I LOVE Civil engineering projects and seeing the science and logistics of putting it all together. Great job on your channel, it’s one of my favorites on UA-cam.
I sympathize with all the affected people in Mississippi. As a person who grew up in Eastern Europe I understand how these things take years of mismanagement to occur. And I am angry that it is allowed to happen in the US. But then again, your country is as big as my continent, so it is hard to hold it to the same standards as our tiny countries.
You used to be able to travel all about the place on trams. I forget the exact end points, but it was said you could travel from (say) Dover NH to Pawtucket RI on trams. But those were private, not public. So government took over. The problem you are seeing is not enough private transportation. The public transportation is doing what public things do.
@@petermgruhn lol troll. "not enough private transportation" ? Theres cars everywhere, there has never been more private transportation. Also no one was even talking about that
@@DomoKuchikan It is because Jackson's majority population is black. 84%? Mississippi is the most racist or second most racist state in the union. The Mississippi government will do the bare minimum to help black people. Mississippi has been a political cesspool since its inception. There are more criminals within the state government than in their prison system. American political corruption was created in Mississippi. Them and Louisiana are easily the two most corrupt states in the country.
Grady, me and my boys love your channel. We live in a rural area and would love to see an episode on gravel roads. The physics behind washboarding would be particularly interesting.
@@Not_mera Had the same experience, thankfully you gave me the answer before my head hurt. Typical Americans dumbing down terms. It's glasses > EYEglasses all over again.
Excellent video. I worked in the industry and your video is on target. One town I worked in had aprox. 30 % of treated water go out in leaks. I had a company come in and do late night examination with listening devices on the hydrants to locate the leaks. In several places the water went to streams or ponds undected. One lady's duck pond dried up when we repaired a major leak. She was not to happy. Great video and well done. Thanks
Jackson's problem wasn't leakage, it was billing/collection over decades. When they tried to fix it with a new metering system it got worse. Years of lawsuits followed and still over 50% was not being paid for. People went for years without getting a single bill. Laundromats were paying bribes and got no bills. People who got bills just didn't pay them because they never cut service for lack of payment. All this resulted in no money for maintenance. I'm sure they had some leakage problems, and because of the corruption they could not afford to fix them so they added to the problem, but years of corruption and lack of oversight caused Jackson's water problems.
@@sendintheclowns7305 I read all about their issues, also I use to shut off customers not paying and landscapers stealing water from hydrants. They need to contract the system out to a private operator with some authority to remedy the issues.
@@watermanone7567 Exactly, but the city government has become one giant job program for friends and family of politicians. Most contractors will NEVER work for the city of Jackson because they want to be paid in a timely matter, something Jackson is famous for NOT doing.
@@sendintheclowns7305 For once at least the failures of voters went in FAVOR of the residents, consumers, the poor. That almost NEVER happens. (Failure of government = failure of voters)
I'm from and currently live in Mississippi. The root of this problem is the amount of corruption and theft going on inside the state and city government. It is something the people have been actively fighting for decades, especially since hurricane Katrina.
I bet it also helps that the state government has been Republican forever and the city government has been Democratic forever. So no matter who you ask, it probably was the other guy's fault.
Without living there but living in SF for a time which has some similarities. This is it. The racism callout seems strange as Jackson has been under black mayorship for 25 years.
Being Democrat is also expensive. Hinds County (Jackson) votes about 70-75% Democrat, and Democrats are generally very bad at running things. Add to that the natural tendency of all governments to do just about everything badly, and catastrophic mismanagement is the expected outcome.
@@jamesisaac7684 Jackson and a large percentage of the state isn't though. The mayor isn't and most politicians from the Jackson area aren't. Look at a map of D vs R by county and not by the state overall to see my point. Where I live, we vote blue for the local elections or else that person won't get elected at all (blue sherrifs, governors, mayors, constables, etc.) but vote red in the general election for senators and presidents, since the african american population is higher proportionately here in terms of white vs black than anywhere else in the nation, and blacks often outnumber whites depending on the county. The classic "Southern Dixie Democrat" is still a thing here.
Whenever there's civil engineering projects, people focus in hard on the bottom line: "What's it going to cost?" When the more relevant question is, "What's it going to cost NOT to do it?" When it comes to water infrastructure, we were taught that by Professors Cholera and Typhus a couple generations ago. They may have to come out of retirement to teach us again.
You only see one view and it is wrong. The taxpayers ALWAYS pay the fee. The scumbag politicians are the ones that spend the money elsewhere. Find all the past pols involved with this, and hold them accountable. If laws don't allow for that, then GEE. We found the actual problem huh?
I’ve been in water and wastewater treatment for 15 years now. I really appreciate and enjoy this type of content. It it great to see this type of information being available to the public. Thank you Grady! Keep up the good work!
I'm still new to this job but I can tell you one of my first thoughts was about how much goes into this and there's nearly no knowledge, understanding, or public consideration on complexity and difficulty of these jobs and wishing there was an outlet for that information to get into the minds of the general public. For now, I think sharing videos like this are a great way to help people wrap their heads around the potential implications of under-supporting a critical utility like water and sewer.
@@jeremywillis3434 Same can be said about residential plumbing & roofing. People think it looks simple, & it does, but there’s complexity behind it, that most people will never be aware of.
almost 20 years my summer job in college was working for the water district updating all of their valve diagrams. For the whole summer I rode out with a technician, verified the valve diagram, and updated the maps in AutoCAD as needed. It was actually pretty fun.
When a system, such as the water system in a city, has been knowingly neglected for years then such inaction rises to the level of criminal negligence.
@Karl with a K If you have problems with mud in rainstorms in shallow catchment basins, install wells below them during those events which naturally filters the water. Oh right, Democrats.
@Karl with a K Cold water is not frozen and does not break any pipes, and the pipes are underground below any freezing conditions, but ground seepage in bad roads does freeze, heaves the road and takes the pipes with it.
A mechanical engineer once told me that civil engineering was all about "dead things", things that don't move or interact. Your videos show exactly the opposite; dynamic systems that must change with the environment even if they prefer "slow changes". I just love your work.
I used to think the same thing, but now I'm getting my master's in structural engineering 😅 it's great how people like Grady can share his knowledge and help other people understand the world better
Civil Engineering is extremely broad. A lot of people think it's just dirt work or steel buildings. Civil Engineering is literally and figuratively the foundation of all other engineering fields but at the end of the day they all are intertwined. Chemical Engineers make our materials better/safer/stronger/cheaper, mechanical/electrical engineers design the systems in/on our buildings and roads, and Civil Engineers make infrastructure that makes all of that possible (roads, ports, mines, buildings, water plants, power plants, and your house). Civil is the Macro while the others disciplines are the Micro.
Yeah it must've been a pretty ignorant mechanical engineer, especially they ought to know that everything is a spring, even things you think of as solid are always moving and stretching. And that goes for all forms of engineering. The only constant in this universe is change, and engineering is about how to deal with those changes.
I've lived in Jackson most of my adult life. Along with the reasons stated for the under funding of the water system there was a 2010 electronic water meter contract given to Siemens where faulty meters caused wild inaccuracies in billing prompting the city to halt water bill collections. Personally our bi-monthly bill at one point said we owed $1700! One estimate I've seen says it cost the city $450 million while the city only was able to recoup the $90 million of the original contract from a settlement with Siemens.
As a controls engineer in the water industry, this is a great overview of the responsibility the industry has, and an embarrassing reminder of how bad things can get. I interface with a lot of engineering firms for the design of water/wastewater facilities, and this channel does an excellent job at showing the concepts involved. Thank you.
I'm working on a house that has a sewage lift station down the block. Some maintenance was being done and I walked over and started talking to the workers. They were really nice and gave me a quick run through and explanation of how the system works. It smelled terrible but I've become so curious about the city infrastructures since finding your channel.
Civilization after civilization has fallen because they had no way to handle sewage. I talked about that with the man who was pumping out my septic tank once (needs to be done about every 3 to 5 years) and how his work made civilization possible. He was incredibly pleased.
Being From East Mississippi we have always had Boil water warnings through out my life living there. It's not just the capital, it's a State wide issue that has been going on for years.
I grew up in a wealthy county in Kansas, still had boil warnings throughout my childhood during the dry summers... It's not even being in wealthy areas with money to spare, it's just the states themselves refusing to put that money into infrastructure to help the people.
@@dinahmyte3749 it rains almost every afternoon, it's hardly ever dry. It's more corruption is the problem, money is taken from the area's it should go and being used for other reasons. Because they do not have a lot of transparency in government spending it hard to track where money ends up.
@@a3ttr1 I wasn't saying "oh ho ho, I've had it bad" I was pointing out that not even being in wealthy areas fixes underfunded infrastructure. I'll correct my comment with clarification.
Meridian MS is trying to be proactive about replacing old water, sewer and drainage lines. They're going to repave the streets around where the medical centers are, but they're going to replace all the water, sewer and drainage lines first at a cost of 3.5 million. And they're going to upgrade the sewage treatment plant per an agreement with the EPA a few years ago.
@@dinahmyte3749 Sorry if it came off that way. Didn't meant to say that, just there is a lot of unspoken and not reported issues with the infrastructure in Mississippi. In the state they go by the idea if your don't report it, it's not a problem and never happened. The power grid, water, and roads are in very bad shape there. I was just adding to this with what I have seen on the other side of the state and how it's not just a Jackson issue.
8:30 - One of the things I learned working in broadcasting is that it takes at *least* 6 employees *per billet* to staff something for 24/7 operation. There are 4.3 weeks in a month, and you can't have .3 of an employee, so the minimum is 5... but that leaves you no slack for sickness or vacations, so you need at least 6 people *per position*. 7 is better. In particular, 7 makes it easier to avoid people having to work floating shifts, which are also hard. If you have 7 jobs in your treatment plant, you need *seventy people* to staff it. (Obviously, if you have 5 jobs that are the same position, you don't necessarily need a full spare person for all 5, but that's about all the slack you get.) It's a *really big* problem.
I know how, mismanagement and corruption affects people, citizens and public infrastructure, because i live in Turkey. It's so sad to see those happened in Jackson, Mississippi. It's also an irony that it happened in a state named after second longest river in the entire World. Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink.
I live in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and it's wild to me that a capital city of a US state does not have drinkable tap water. I know that we have our issues with public utilities here so this is not coming from a high horse.
Yeah, I was surprised at that too. I live in South Africa, and we have massive issues with corruption and theft (see Eskom, our power utility...), and (at least in my province) we don't really have issues with water...
@@LasseGreiner Why do you think that the US is a developing country? I do agree that our infrastructure and overall way of life is lacking compared to our European neighbors (and I do want to migrate out of the US..), but I don’t think it’s at the point of being a developing country. Many still consider the US to be developed.
@@supercroc8908 If the US were broken up into 50 different countries, many would fit the criteria of developing countries. Many of the states have more federal coming into the state than they have going out as Federal taxes. Some of those state's residents wrongly believe that they are financially supporting the larger, more developed states. It reminds me of a great description of a Libertarian. A Libertarian is like a house cat. Fiercely independent, yet clueless about all the hidden infrastructure keeping them alive.
as a california T3 certified operator the failures of this system shock and appall me. I feel for the people of Jackson, and the operators of the plant who had to make a lot of very hard choices.
I've been in the water/ wastewater industry for 13 years (on the lab side of things) and I think your explanations in this video are great. I don't think most people know how complex a water system is, including the people running the city. Hopefully this incident and Flint will persuade our leaders to listen to the professionals in the industry about funding and public works. Thank you for bringing attention to this matter.
I do see three problems: 1. Groundwater reserves should be a public resource. So you can't tap them as a landowner, at least not without paying and proper regulation. 2. Bailout if things get bad enough. There's a general tendency in the US to bail out private / public entities with federal funds if things get bad enough (as long as their big enough). This incentives irresponsible risk taking. Intervention should be carried out earlier, but rather with the Federal Money be a lone. Then this should force Price / Tax increases to pay it back. That way, acting irresponsibly will come bite you and be discouraged. 3. Utilities are tied into the city Budget. They should rather be semi independent entities. Generating their own revenue and using it to maintain the infrastructure. This way, politicians can't slash the reinvestment and use the money to gain popularity by tax cuts. Over here in Switzerland the Utilities are run either by publicly owned companies or by cooperatives (non-profit, have to reinvest all the profit). Public owned may deposit profits into the city budget. Cities Budget are voted on by direct democracy (Including tax rate). But Debt Limit applies: You go over it, state Authorities are forced to increase City taxes until you're below the debt limit again. The result: Utilities are far more expensive (you pay in full, including infrastructure renewal), but their service quality generally is excellent.
As a life long resident of Jackson, MS. the boil ware alerts have been going on for the past 30+ years on average of once a quarter per year until the last few years. Both Democrat and Republican members of the city counsel and the mayor, , carry most of the blame for not providing enough of the monies brought in from the water billing to remain with the water department. They have been taking it for "pet projects" like installing roundabouts downtown, building a convention center that has had little use, and doing "band-aide fixes" to the water system (you can only install so many temp pipe clamps on a pipe until there is no room for more) , until it is a major break and a section of pipe has to be replaced, They have been reducing personal to maintain the system so no preventive maintenance can be done to the treatment stations or distribution system (like repairing minor leaks reported until they become a major break). I see no changes in the future as once these repairs are done and the system is back online my money is everything will go back to "status quo" of "if it is not broke don't fix it" and "If we don't report it it is not broken" as it is now. Thanks Grady for helping bring this out into the light again for others to know about.
Totally agree. I am a resident of Jackson. Before the water situation was addressed to the nation, the city of Jackson would turn off the water without warning. This goes back to the late 90s and 2000s. The city, county, and state are to blame for the crisis. Taxes are being raised but no results. Great video of awareness.
Good answer, also the need to get the water that is used by the public billed properly and the money only used to upgrade the water infastructure. Thanks
@@justnene2967 ask your current mayor where the 90 million went from the settlement with Siemens for faulty water meters that could have replaced all the steel pipe in the city but the money is nowhere to be found
@Justin Jones like the rest of the taxpayer's money. In the county and city council pocket. For example, the city doesn't have a contract for garbage collection (for over 3 years). The city claims they don't have the money to pay the current contractor but taxpayers pay garbage collection fees every month. So the money is going back in the politicians pocket. Same situation with infrastructure and vehicle registration. Car tags average $700 to $1100 every year and the roads are horrible.
omg someone that actually got this right. Thank god about this. Do you think you can rally people to just fund the water plant at all or do you think the people will not be willing to do so. Like actually hand the person the money at the water plant to actually go fix the problem? If you hand it to the government they will push the money around and only a part of it will go to them I know that for a fact. But to the person running the water plant do you think they will fix the problem or run away with the money also?
Man, what a terrible situation. The residents of Jackson constantly losing access to clean water -- it must be terrifying for something so fundamental to be so uncertain. The fact that people working in the facilities were sounding the alarm for years and just being ignored is, to me, criminal negligence by the city government. There are so many stories like this, where saving a penny is more important than respect for what someone's in charge of. I keep thinking about the recent train derailment and vinyl chloride spill in Ohio, and wondering how anyone could consider their personal wealth more important than the consequences of carelessness.
"wondering how anyone could consider their personal wealth more important than the consequences of carelessness" That's easy: it's *other* people who face the consequences. Capitalism promotes sociopaths and psychopaths to the executive suite, so if something isn't *their* problem, they don't care about it.
@@jursamaj Intellectually, I do understand. There's no off-switch for the capitalist machine. I just can't put myself into the shoes of someone that places no inherent value on human life. It's probably a good thing that I'm not able to empathize with that, but it also makes for a terrifying world sometimes.
Conservatives refuse to spend money on things that everyone relies on. Until there's an emergency and they need 5x the amount to fix it than if they had just properly paid, staffed, maintained, and repaired their systems decades ago. It depresses me. Republican views are just incompatible with modern life.
Thank you Grady for covering this crisis! It's heartbreaking for the residents of Jackson. It's interesting that Mississippi is the only state that does not have a Water and Wastewater Agency Response Network (WARN). I emailed Senator Wicker about it and learned that Mississippi chose to do something different and has Rural Water Emergency Assistance Cooperative under the Mississippi Rural Water Association. Apparently a lot of mutual aid came through that channel and still may be helping the City. Another challenge is the expansive clay in and around Jackson called Yazoo Clay...which is a serious challenge. Roads and houses often buckle and shift due to Yazoo Clay here...which doesn't help the water / wastewater system pipes.
As a WTP Operator, everything described in this video is our worst nightmare. Occasional BWA's are common, but this would be horrible. My hat is off to those operators in Jackson who actually had to deal with this while not being compensated fairly. I hope they find better jobs at other facilities and leave the city of Jackson as soon as they can. This is exactly what happens when you don't maintain your infrastructure. This all started on a political level, as most issues do.
After 2 years in my home in Jackson, and 6+ trips to the water department (with blank checks in hand) - I have never received a bill for water. Only one of the countless issues in this city.
Jackson resident here- it's crazy that over the last 10 years, each of these events bleeds together into one general sense of "this will never change." I know that's not true, things can change. Takes honesty and transparency and better leadership. Thanks for walking through the story.
It takes votes. Mississippi is one of, if not THE, reddest states. You (maybe not you personally) vote for anti-government politicians. You vote to get rid of taxes, public funding, and environmental regulation. And then you beg the feds to give you $800 million that other, much more democratic, states finance. Stop begging for help and pay for your own infrastructure. Stop pretending to be victims. Stop voting for red clowns, or pack your bags and take your money to a better state. Votes are good but ultimately money is the only thing anyone listens to. You won't be getting any of my tourism dollars, that's for sure. (Sorry, William, nothing personal)
It's gonna take an outside entity to swoop in and fix the problem, because the local government can't be trusted to manage the funds and local construction companies can't be trusted to operate with integrity.
I only expect to hear more stories like this in the coming decades. Cities and states across the US have been systematically mismanaged, and the predominate work culture is so toxic that the talented people we need to solve these problems want nothing to do with it.
Things like THIS are what federal governments should be spending time and money on, not shoving woke politics down everyone's throats and sending billions of dollars abroad !! 😡😡😡
@@dankelly5150 because you think the previous republican governments did better?! As OP said, this is mismanagement and toxic work culture, things both parties are culprit of. BTW the Mississippi is a fully republican state since decades, and if the intervention had to come from federal order it's mainly because the state itself didn't do its job prior to that.
@@dankelly5150the federal government has no money! This is YOUR and MY money they are pissing away! If these folks voted these morons into their government then why should you and I have to bail out their dumb, foolish decisions? Let them learn the hard way. There is no such thing as.a free lunch!
Videos like these are extremely important in understanding how our society functions. From politics to engineering issues, having some grasp on all of this is extremely beneficial in tackling and understanding future problems, and with how current US infrastructure is, these problems are only going to become more apparent and compound further.
Or rather how it doesn't function. As the population trends toward 100% African, the probability of clean drinking water being plumbed in approaches zero. Jackson, Mississippi is currently 78.55% African. Most of the way there, water's almost gone.
Thank you for presenting a complex engineering and political situation in a factual manner. In the U.S. we take reliable access to utilities including potable water, sewer, storm water, natural gas/propane, and electricity for granted. Hopefully, this presentation has a significant number of viewers to educate everyone on the importance and significance of maintaining a reliable utility infrastructure. Again, well done and keep up the excellent videos.
If you haven't heard of it, definitely look into Philadelphia's Green Storm Water Management system. As an alternative to a large sewer expansion the city has started building green infiltration areas, such as roof top gardens, permeable pavement, and retention basins in public spaces. I was able to work on that project with the department of water and really found both the political and engineering side of it fascinating.
@@dplj4428 Dunno about articles, but the first time I heard about Philadelphia's plans for storm water management was this video: ua-cam.com/video/coXe8_xnAOs/v-deo.html The part about Philadelphia is at the end, but the rest of the video covers related concepts. I particularly like the idea of usable public spaces that double as flood protection reservoirs when needed.
Hello Grady, I really appreciate your content and I have a question for you. I live in a very cold climate (Ontario, Canada) and it leads me to wonder how potable water/waste water plants function in very cold climates where the temperature in winter may not rise above freezing. Don't those large open-air ponds freeze over? What other challenges are inherent in cold climates for water treatment plants?
I would be interested as well. My bets are on exothermic reactions at the waste water facility and keeping things moving. Either that or a totally different approach to wastewater treatment in general. I wonder if underground pipes then have to be insulated?
i would love a video on this too. i'm in texas, same as grady, so i've first hand seen the devastating effects of the cold weather on this sub tropical region. i would love to see more about how critical infrastructure are designed to keep functioning in extremely cold areas.
As a Brit married to a Hungarian I find this subject fascinating - with the difference in the climates of the two countries. In much of Britain, it rarely gets below freezing or above 30 degrees, so physical infrastructure is relatively easy - it simply doesn't have to cope with extremes. But in Hungary it can get down to -20, or worse, in winter, and above 40 in the summer. So, considering something like road and pavement surfaces, which have to cope with both long-duration freezing conditions AND tar-melting heat, it's no wonder they generally aren't in good condition in Hungary. But Hungarian motorways and main roads are generally fine. How do they make major roads climate-proof? And, if they CAN do that for key roads, why can't they do it for ordinary highways, city streets, pavements, etc?!
I've been in infrastructure management for 15 years. The larger reservoirs are large enough and have enough flow that you only get surface ice. The smaller reservoirs are underground. Pipelines are buried deeper underground than in warmer climates -- which makes repairs more challenging. Performing a pipeline inspection is always fun when the cold air entering a water main break causes an ice sheet to form on the surface of the water remaining inside the pipe.
Having been to Jackson quite a few, I can assure you the pipes were gonna break anyway, because breaks were already rampant. It's part of why the roads are irredeemably terrible. Pipe gets a leak and it takes months before it's really noticed and more months to get it worked on. Even then, often it's only a clamped on patch, which just means somewhere else in that old pipe is going to break within a few months. Some of the nearby cities, like Pearl, aren't much better with fewer broken lines, proportionately, but the same shoddy repair approach
I been working here for 4 weeks replacing the gas lines since the houses blew up and I have not seen a water department worker yet, water leak everywhere we dig, call them to let them know but no one comes, they just don’t care
@@Drewdayz2419 Some wonder why no one wants to live in these places, but when a home can become like it's in a 3rd world nation over night and stay that way for weeks to months, that's a hard problem to ignore.
I live in Rio de Janeiro, we have one of the largest WTP in the world and we had frequent problems with pollution and algae in the water. Fortunately the state government decided to act and is expanding the treatment infrastructure. In addition, part of the water and sewage service in the metropolitan region has been divided into areas that are now managed by different private companies.
I lived in that city for many years, and mom still lives there. This is more of a failure of the politicians over several decades, and not paying attention to the "out of sight, out of mind" infrastructure.
@@veramae4098 it’s not that simple. I’m from a small southern town, where many republicans run unopposed, & have for the last 20 years, many are related.
nothing about this seems like "corruption" it has a low tax bases. not enough money to hire good people. reality is in the rest of the world. state and fed goverment spend ALOT of money supporting their cities, and their infrastructure. its extremly clear the state of MS is 100% at fault for refusing to provide the needed money and support years ago.
As someone from Hong Kong, I'm so used to boiling tap water before drinking I have trouble understanding "boil water notice" back when I first heard it before. 🤣 I was like "is that a cool code name for something?" Great video as always, Grady
Unfortunately there is lead, and other harmful chemicals in jacksons water that does not clean up or break down during boiling. This has a direct negative effect on the children and citizens.
Man, I was from Vietnam and back then at least half of our fridges were filled with boiled water. I live in the US now and most people here really take the quality of their tap water for granted. In fact, many Americans travel overseas (like Mexico) and unknowingly drink from the tap and get sick.
Rapidly growing countries like China or Vietnam are sorta suffering from their growth in that it's basically impossible for infrastructure to keep up with rapidly growing populations and economies. Infrastructure projects by their nature takes many years and sometimes decades to build, meanwhile growth changes from year to year, so it can become impossible to predict demand in the future and you might be in a more or less constant state of construction, which also puts bottlenecks on existing systems. Not to mention the fact that regulators also have a much harder job when growth is so rapid and large, it can be impossible to make sure that new housing developments actually stick to their regulated size and just like infrastructure the regulation departments might not be able to keep up in size with the growth. The rapid growth will also mean that there's a direct and huge economic incentive to keep regulators constrained and ineffective. Western countries essentially have a much easier job since most of the growth already happened and all of the basics of infrastructure and regulation are already in place. They're not playing catch up and so can much more easily keep up with demand.
@@hedgehog3180 combine that with sustainability efforts and there could be something there. Im aware that rainwater isn't clean, but if the area isn't particularly polluted,it could be cleaner than the kind of tap that gets you sick. Collecting rainwater with big roof funnels and multiple layers of filter seems like it could be cool. I'm aware it's slot of effort but it's independent extra water
7:57 it looks like what was effecting the failure of the plant was horrible documentation, toxic work environment, and massive under compensation, leading to a high turnover rate, leading to the facility being severely understaffed.
You should do a piece on the Red Hill fuel spill on Oahu, Hawaii. The military is refusing to do anything about it and defying EPA and local government orders! On top of that they had another fuel spill on Haleakala.
One thing I don't think you touched on enough was the piping system itself. The system is generations old and uses various materials including lead piping, so much of the system is now brittle or corroded. To make matters worse many of these pipes are buried shallow in the Earth so a big freeze easily reaches them and the soil around the area is highly expansive too (called Yazoo Clay). So unfortunately it's not just the water plant, the whole piping system itself is in desperate need as well.
Thats something i was wondering about, a ton of cities north of Jackson have surface water supplies and almost no issue with the cold. In my area 4ft is considered the frost line so i assume municipal water has the top of the pipe at like 5ft down so they can't be affected by long and cold winters. Are these pipes only 6in down or something? The ground is warm and they should know that they get periodic cold blasts even if on average they are a warm climate, so they should be prepared for the annual arctic blast or whatever its gets called. Also, lead pipes aren't technically bad because under normal conditions the biofilm inside all pipes protects the pipes so lead won't enter the water. But ideally we should remove them all to prevent another Flint Michigan where someone adds the wrong additive and suddenly the lead is flaking off into the water.
I'm a native Mississippian. And much of my family still lives in Jackson although I haven't lived in the south since 1990. Thank you for bringing to light the struggles the people of Jackson are dealing with and some of the roots of the issues. I saw the thumbnail of the spillway and remembered being a child fishing in that area. Keep up the good work, Grady! Many thanks.
The last Republican in charge of Jackson left office in 1988. It’s been unified democratic control for over 30 years. The state isn’t in charge of local water treatment plants, that’s the city and county.
@@kovu159 15:53 to work properly those system often need funding from the state level. Not saying this is fault of republican, but just it is more complicated than the color of the state/city
@@kovu159 So you expect a city to pay to completely overhaul its entire water system on its own? Something that always requires funding from the state level? Seems like you're just a racist trying to shift blame. And "seems like" is being generous.
@@alexrogers777 It's racist to think a city should maintain city services? What do you think cities do? Also, how is failing to maintain water infrastructure dependent on race? That's a pretty wild thing to say.
VERY good video, thank you so much for this!! Yet another resident of Mississippi here - not far south of Jackson, in fact. The city's troubles with infrastructure are sadly not unique - such problems are happening all over the state, to some degree. Jackson has it very bad and it's very very public now, but it's not at all the only place. Petal (next door to my own city, Hattiesburg) is right on the Leaf River, and every single time it rains for more than an hour, there are places in the town that immediately flood. I have no firm info on what their water quality is like, but having known my husband's (very) extended family across three or four counties - almost all of them would rather have their own wells than deal with "city water," because of how poorly maintained and managed so many of the systems are. I count myself lucky: where I live, there have been very few boil water notices and the only time my neighborhood completely lost water access was right after Hurricane Katrina. But I'm also within metaphorical spitting distance of the county hospital, and all the infrastructure that supports that hospital kind of radiates out a bit and helps its immediate vicinity. When power was finally starting to get restored in the city after the hurricane, the hospital's part of the grid was the very first one to come up - and one day later, our neighborhood got power too. Same with water. But even so, there is chronic trouble and it's very obvious. Big projects are ongoing right now because we finally have a decent mayor not lining his pockets; but it's anyone's guess if those projects can be completed before the current mayor changes. There are huge problems here with staffing the sanitation department, evidenced by the insane schedule forced on just the garbage truck workers. From the things I've read on local news sources, Jackson has ALL those same problems we do, just worse, and for longer. Everyone in the state is really hoping that Jackson can get back on its feet, but more than half of us are poor and/or in various under-represented minorities. And from our lowly perspective, the outlook isn't too rosy... But here's hoping that the politicians will surprise us for once.
Water problems are happening even in the rural parts of the country. Maine has been dealing with pfas in ground water. This comes from spreading sludge from cities and industry. The legal limit is set at 20 ppt Pfas. My drill well was tested because of spreading sludge on a farm 5 miles away. (When originally spread the farmers where told that the sludge would be good and had been tested) For almost 4 months I could not drink my water boiling would not help. Many many others have this problem. So I lived on bottled water that whole time. It's a lot easier to boil water but only being able to use bottled water a bit harder. More and more cities are finding that their public water is contaminated with Pfas that are a health problem. Installation of activated charcoal filters took out the pfas. Maine has made regulations about this. The EPA has made recommendations about the levels and are testing for it. Tests are expensive ($800 each). This is becoming a health problem all over the world.
Yeah, it sucks, although we moved to a reverse osmosis system. Bottled water isn't the only option. But yeah... really sucks. It's really not cities that are to blame, though, it's 100% unregulated industry which are also building on sites in rural areas since the land is cheap and then lying their way into being allowed to build and operate, or taking advantage of loose laws.
I requested your book as a Christmas gift and got it! It is so interesting and well illustrated, I'm hoping it helps inspire my son to consider a career in engineering.
I am from Detroit, MI. Jackson, MS, is my second home. I will forever cherish the time i lived there. Its a beautiful place. The people there are just like everyone else, but different. The women are beautiful
I'm looking forward to the "East Palestine Derailment Disaster" video. Oh and don't forget to recap on the condo complex that collapsed in Florida! I am very intrigued to learn more about that tragedy.
Thank you for raising the issues behind the Jackson, MS water issues. I know you like to stick with the engineering of things and the complex engineering of the Jackson, MS water infrastructure certainly contributes to their problems. But, as you stated, often there is much more behind the engineering that factor into the issues that cause their failure. I think this was one of your best segments yet, precisely because you did not shrink from the root causes of this crises.
Excellent video! I live in Memphis and within the last few years we had 3 water outages, which we never experienced anywhere else. One was random and the other two were as a result of the cold weather. The water outages and prolonged boil orders here got so bad last time that bottled water was sold out everywhere and the city was offering 5 gallon buckets of non potable flush water to people with outages.
I didn't know this was a state capital. I had heard of the water issues in Flint and Jackson, but that this kind of neglect of critical infrastructure was happening in a state capital of the world's largest economy says a lot about how defunct the political system of that country really is.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 Definitely both. Most (R) are just misspelled (D). Issue is corruption, which lives in large numbers throughout the entire political system.
I’ve got a cool story you might like to cover, I live next to the army base fort Devens, and our water got contaminated with PFAS, this was a synthetic insulator used for military that can’t be destroyed, it got into our water and for over a month the town bought everyone Poland springs until they could get a flirtation plant up and running
Appreciate you using your calm, calculating engineering approach to covering this issue, Grady. There are a lot of good reasons for problems of this magnitude to spark outrage. But, then the problem gets that much harder to fix amidst the noise of the outrage - we lose sight of how we got there. I do hope the residents of Jackson get the water delivery they deserve eventually, but there’s no way it’s going to come quickly any way this gets cut.
The mob never realizes who is actually to blame. You know who caused Jackson's issues? Jackson voters. They have voted in incompetent socialists for generations. It's the same reason LA, Seattle and New York are also such great places to live. Run by self described socialists, yet the only people who can afford to live there are ultra rich.
@@TheOwenMajor Flint Michigan has had similar water problems under their Republican leadership. Texas can't keep the lights on in the cold, and I know of no more Republican state in the union. I very much doubt this is an issue solely of "incompetent socialists." Even if it were the issue, running water should not be a partisan divide. I'd love to know the justification for the state's Republican government ignoring this glaring issue in the state's own capital city. Grady's own video here suggests they had lots of warning before any of this happened. To me, it seems far more likely this is an issue of water authorities squabbling over budgets and jurisdiction, as every government organization I've seen falls victim to eventually. Combine this with a country-wide history of under-investment in infrastructure, and we have a recipe for disaster.
@@McTroyd a couple instances is a coincidence...more than that makes a pattern. If ya'll seriously think the R attached to the goverments involved isn't a core part of the problem... ya'll are going to keep "fixing" preventable problems for centuries. Republican states & cities get what they deserve.
@@McTroyd I agree. I don't know when the mayor was elected but this kind of lack of funds and maintenance certainly occurred way before his mandate. And yes republican partisans seems to elude the fact the state itself is republican and they apparently didn't try to prevent the rot of their capital city, which should be the symbol of their state. IMHO all of those old white republican elected people probably live in some fancy suburbs or ranches, they just commute to the city and they don't care about the poor (and black) people living there. They probably financed the off-grid wells for the hospitals instead of fixing the main issue.
There are many places across the U.S. without good/potable water. I live near the town of Maypearl, TX, and our water has a PH about 9, TDS off the charts, it's salty, etc. When you wash your hands or dishes with it, you're left slimy-feeling after the soap is all rinsed off. I can't use it for myself, my dog, my cats, or my aquarium. And judging by how much RO water the local dollar store moves, no one else is drinking it, either. There's a large leak in the pipe that leads to my house down the street that washes away the road every couple of years - most assuredly not the only spot like it. We are issued boil water notices very frequently. My own meter doesn't accurately measure water since my bill didn't go up after a leak at the shut off valve went unnoticed for a month, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that, either. Unlike Jackson, we do usually have water available. But it seems we're heading in a similar direction in a hurry. We won't get any press about it, though, since we're a small town of a few thousand.
Have you considered getting a rainwater tank? If you're collecting your own water off your own roof, you're in control. Even if your air and roof are so dirty you have to filter the water to make it drinkable, you still have that water - it's yours, and your tank tops itself up every time it rains.
As a now no retired water and waste waster operator and manager of 25 years I find it hard to understand how Flint and Jackson happened unless there was no enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act at several levels. A Public Utility has the obligation to provide a safe product, dependable service, and a rate structure that provides for sustainability. Keeping rates artificially low will make someone later pay for the system that you are wearing out today. All to often, particularly in smaller systems, depreciation of assets is not accounted for as a real cost. You did a great job presenting the issues. Love your channel.
Flint happened due to overtaking the city mgmt due to 'failing' parameters. The new overseer changed the water supply to own their own instead of buying water from Detroit supply. Unfortunately they did not hire knowledgeable folks to run it and they failed to add the chemical that adheres to pipes so they don't corrode them. Add older, lead pipes. Add a government who ignored it cuz the yes men told them otherwise. My dad was a civil engineer and had it pegged within a month. If it happened in west Bloomfield or other richer areas it would not have been ignored. They switched back to Detroit, which wasn't necessary but political. It wasn't the water supply itself that was the problem, it just added to the cost of fixing it. The city of Flint now has completely new pipes all the way to the individual houses, and has lower lead levels than many other places in Michigan. Damage done, but keep in mind my 50yr old self was exposed to tons of lead in the 70s between gasoline, paint, etc and managed ok, as did most of us from that era, so don't write off these kids, they have great potential. When you know better, do better. I do know a lot of food (WIC and SNAP) and healthcare ( Medicaid) was increased to this area to help offset the lead exposure.
I live in a city next to Jackson. I moved here, away from Jackson years ago. Jackson used to be a great city. But now it is riddled with crime and high taxes. The city council and mayor don't have the leadership or foresight to solve these problems. And yes the corruption is as bad as the finger pointing. It is not just the water supply that is bad in Jackson. The streets are a mess with pot holes deep enough that a senior girl in high school was killed when she drove into one. All the business have left for surrounding cities and counties. Jackson could have been the hub of the south since it is between Dallas and Atlanta and between Memphis and New Orleans. But the slimey greedy leadership has let it all go to waste now. And the worst thing is they keep getting reelected....
The Mississippi governor needs to be held accountable. This issue has been bought to his attention for years, but he didn't care because Jackson is a majority Black city.
@@alyssam1159 Do you know how government works? Currently the State Government is threatening to take over the city of Jackson's water supply issues and the Mayor, City Council, and citizens are telling them to back off. They don't need them to fix it. I would assume the Governor would get similar treatment.
As a professional engineer, I drive trains back and forth day after day. I have seen many small towns and drank plenty of water from said towns. TPS report after TPS report, I can attest to the absence of oversight in my line of work. I have had incontinence issues stemming from my heavy consumption of water as a result of kidney stones, and my fear of ever having another. Utility systems are running behind. I have interfaced with water meters, water fountains, and water features. My favorite thing about water is how delicious it tastes when I take my morning vitamins, but nothing beats a good egg fried on the sidewalk in the Missouri sun.
One thing you failed to mention is the type of soil they have to deal with. We call it "Yazoo clay," and it is constantly moving. It also effects building foundations. This coupled with decades of neglect, mismanagement and a bit of good old fashioned corruption has a lot to do with this problem. As far as people leaving, I don't blame them. Per population numbers Jackson has the highest murder rate in the nation.
Some very important points, and well covered. I follow your channel and have been on numerous tours of infrastructure just because I'm curious about it, but I know full well I'm ignorant of a lot of it. I keep seeing disaster after disaster (Texas ice storm, Flint water crisis, Jackson water crisis, etc.) and it's hard not to feel like "the walls are closing in" with underinvestment in infrastructure. We have had our share of bridge and dam failures, as well as my town needing to bail out and eventually annex the neighboring town when their sewer treatment system was failing. So it definitely feels close to home. But "feels" is not reality, so I'm trying to stay grounded as I learn more about this.
I am a long-time resident of Jackson. The major work for the water system was built in the late forties and early fifties, and it used good old state contract iron pipes. Now, 70 years later, you can poke a hole in those iron pipes with your finger.
I live in a completely different country. But we are currently losing 60% of all of our water into the ground every second of every day for 2 years. We don't get boil water notices (we can generate pressure without needing to pump it) but we do often get told to save water because the reservoirs can't hold enough. Its effectively the same problem here. Its really infuriating knowing that there is 30 years of poor and deferred maintenance that isn't going to be solved overnight and has made the entire system on borderline breaking point.
I'm not sure you mean what you seem to mean. If you were losing 60% per second, then you'd be losing 99% every 5 seconds. In 15 seconds one million liters would be reduced to just one liter. One hundred billion liters would be reduced to 100 milliliters in 30 seconds.
Does time matter? Other than the 2 year period, if you are losing 60% of the treated water regardless if it was every second, minute, hour, day or month. Either way, that represents a large cost in electricity and chemicals that are essentially saturating the ground and its really quite shocking that somebody would keep deferring maintenance when the losses amount to so much.
@@shanelmurray3448 It absolutely matters. What they probably meant, all over exaggeration aside, was that they've lost 60% of their water to the ground over 2 years, or that each day, 60% of that day's water production is lost.
@@ElusiveTy but if your losing 60% of your water does a timeframe matter. Because everything you produce you lose 60% of. Timeframe gives a quantity. But the sub times don't add value to the statement
Between Christmas and new years the Asheville area had a bunch of pipes burst which caused us to lose water for over a week. It was pretty eye opening as to how much your lifestyle changes without water. Luckily we had a pool and hot tub full of water so we could use the hot tub to rinse off and the pool water to flush the toilet.
I never thought I’d see the city I live and work in as the subject of one of your videos. It’s interesting to see the way you broke down the issues. The water issue in Jackson has been an issue for many years and it’s mostly the direct result of mismanaged and corrupt government at the local level.
What you said is all plainly obvious. Now, the interesting part will be - how you hold the ones actually accountable, accountable. They are all retried and kicking back now living off the corrupt money. What will be done to them? Nothing??? Exactly.
But do the ppl of your state want "more" federal oversight, or they want to stick with state right? Your local government does not seem to serve them very well, because of lack of funding. But they pay "lower" tax, right? The people are led to focus on red meat issues (guns, CRT, wokeness, etc.), not basic infrastructures. But they will pay eventually, usually astronomically in the end. I live in Texas, and familiar with these failures.
@@hdlam1 you seem to have a few basic assumptions wrong - the city is 78.55% black... so you can take your stereotypes about red state whites and stick them where they came from. There's no tax base because of rampant criminality - anyone who can afford to move away has mostly already done so since the 70s. You're correct about one part - yeah they're going to pay astronomically - well someone will anyway.
Jackson was wild, i grew up further north and the thing that blew my mind when i worked there for a few months is that there were 2 of every chain restaurant, I imagine you can guess why
I enormously value your videos on water resources & water infrastructure. Your coverage is excellent and I really appreciate your detailed analysis of water problems as I work on starting my own career in environmental & water resources. Thank you for your excellent work in this area & I look forward to your future topics as well!
Thank you for calling out the fact that Jackson hasn't simply been ignoring this problem, but has been going without the necessary support of local and federal government. I grew up in Mississippi and it's long been the case that the state government ignores the needs of the capitol city and Hinds county in general. It's upsetting and only hurts the state. Unfortunately I don't see this changing any time soon.
Don't blame the Federal government. They have always taken more in Federal aid than they contributed. MS has, like all southern states, been a drag on the entire national treasury. Blame the idiots people there elect. Good 'ole boy's robbing the state blind.
Same here in the UK. There's a HUGE stink going on at the moment with one of our water companies having to cut the supply for a few days to half a city of 300K people twice in as many months because of water main issues. Questions were asked in Parliament and you can bet there'll be compensation paid. I drink water from the tap with not a second thought (though I do put it through a softening filter for making tea :) ). It's just incomprehensible to me that a city in a supposedly developed nation can't supply its people with potable water.
That holds for almost the entirety of the United States. However, it must be said that the Deep South is closer to countries like Haiti in terms of standard of living. The infant mortality of Mississippi is the same as in Kazakhstan.
Mississippi is one of our most backwards states, one that takes pride in their stupidity and bigotry. Nothing failing like this in Mississippi is surprising. The fact that they even told people is the more surprising part.
As a former PWS operations supervisor, I can tell you this problem is everywhere! Not necessarily to this extent. No valve/hydrant mapping (what's GIS?), data collection, hydrant flushing, valve exercising. Hydrant flushing is a good one, I used to take both static and dynamic pressures as well as flow via pitot all written down, but on paper. I must have spent months personally getting everything scanned in digitally. Most of our maps were on 3"x5" cards for both hydrants and gate valves, as well as service connections. All in one place. What if there was a fire? Everything went on CD-R record-wise and was kept in at least 2 locations. @7:52 that is something to look at...lack of everything!!! Wow! Almost a snowball effect, can't flush, because pipes will break, water quality deteriorates...people out of water. Invest in INFRASTRUCTURE!! Also, competent, accordingly compensated operators!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for spotlighting this issue. I'm hoping that this might be the first in a series. The world could use more calm, instructive voices explaining the importance of infrastructure and why it needs money to be maintained.
A video on the Washington Aqueduct, which is managed by the US Army Corp’s of engineers to provide water to Washington, DC would be a great follow up to this video. It’s a distribution network with a variety of different processes, including multiple sedimentation basins, and a surplus of water that allowed them to sell to neighboring areas in Northern Virginia. The city is also undertaking a massive project to hire tunnels under DC to move storm water away from the urban center faster.
Thank you so much! You bring so much clarity, compassion and insight to subjects I want to more educated on every single time. I deeply appreciate all the time it has obviously taken you to make such a professional video. I'm always fascinated by the world around me, more so thanks to you. You work is work that so many benefit from!
Suggestion for a video: utility distribution (water, electric, heat) in a place where it routinely gets -20F in the winter: central Alaska. I live in Fairbanks and we have quite a few special considerations to ensure all piping is below the frost line. Also, have you done a video on the Alaskan pipeline? It's an incredible bit of infrastructure that boggles the mind in terms of complexity, size, and elegance of the chosen solutions. Basically, how do you keep an 800-mile tube structurally sound in an area known for earthquakes, powerful and destructive wildlife, and wild temperature variations from -70F to +70F?
-90 to +100, I'll admit that these are more outlying temperatures, but they exist. Also, you forgot the wildfires. And elevation changes. And permafrost. 😁
I get this feeling the water grid in Jackson is quite possibly at the worst stage something could be in. Rip and Replace. like a large scale, far more expensive version of when you need to totally gut a house because its been so neglected.
I went to college in Jackson MS. In 2008 a water main broke, and we were kicked off a college campus with 2 hours notice. I had nowhere to sleep for days.
Thank you for talking water infrastructure. It's a complex, critical system that a lot of people don't appreciate. The people that work it are some of the hardest workers out there. We hired a guy for our county water/sewer maintenance team recently and after watching first hand what the job entailed for 2 hours, he quit. He had realized just how tough and potentially dangerous the job was.
@@mgntstr The average age of our maintenance department is probably within the millennials range lol. We pay pretty reasonably for our area but there's also DOD contracts and military nearby. This guy was totally green to the world of water and sewer with nearly no experience. I think reading the job description versus actually seeing how tough the job is got us.
Not sure how my old tiny town’s doing now, but they could never keep a water maintenance tech for more than a couple of days. I know many who were hired, & it didn’t matter what they paid, it was dangerous, unpleasant work… two started their own roofing company & another went back to his landscaping job. One very kind, hardworking, rather slow friend, was more than happy to get the job. But he told me later… after fulfilling his two weeks notice… that he was terrified the entire time, that there was evil & corruption going on there & he didn’t think that he’d make it out alive. After 44 years in that town, he moved out of state, the following month.
@@sunshine3914 it's shameful to see this in governments regardless but to see it in a small town government feels worse somehow. I like to think we're pretty corruption free, though, I'm also not that naive. I haven't witness corruption thus far and the one time I heard about textbook corruption happening within the department was when a long time worker was being fired because he had used resources to his own benefit. I'd like to think that means they take it seriously. Especially considering the infringement wasn't that serious. He was doing side jobs for his own company and using tools (including a truck) from the department.
There is a thin veneer of hyper competent professionals that keep the lights on and the water drinkable, replace them with the unworthy and the water turns brown and the lights go out.
I should hope it wouldn't require a federal agency. Most people use public drinking water. If it's bad, or, heaven help us, dangerous, the voters have the power to make it right -- they literally elect everybody involved in the infrastructure management process. Heck, there are colleges pretty much everywhere now, too. Presumably they have STEM or hydro engineering curriculum that could easily involve prowling around town testing the water supply. There's no harm in the EPA bullying governments into getting their stuff together, but we're literally drinking this water! *WE* shouldn't let it get this bad!
I really like your infrastructure videos. It is easy to overlook how important they are until they fail. Unfortunately here in the US we have chosen to under invest in infrastructure for decades. Here in our small town will will be voting on renovating our waste water treatment facility. It was originally built in the mid 1980s so a lot of the equipment is at end of life and we need to comply with tighter EPA requirement for Phosphorous and heavy metal discharge.
When the folks with the purse strings in government don't believe in government, you get to find out what happens when government fails. Good job Mississippi!
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Perhaps change the title to "The Only State Capital Where You Can’t Drink the TAP Water". The current title doesn't say what water can't be drunk.
"In Plain Sight" :) Go for it my friend.
@@alaric_ Heh, someone forgot about Austin Texas where where we've had two major incidents. Where our water went Clam and where we had a facility break down and make the water undrinkable.
@@alaric_ what other public source of water do you commonly enjoy?
Jackson is still better off today than Flint MI or Ohio.
I worked for a civil engineering firm that had a long project on a small town's water system that was only billing 30% of their pumped water. They hired us to write up a rate report to try and raise the rates to their customers to make up for the shortfalls their utility system was having. Instead we recommended that we actually do a system audit, and if we couldn't find improvements then we'd have the strong evidence that they needed the rate improvement. The town council balked at our cost but agreed.
Within 3 months we found and repaired 3 big "hidden" main breaks that brought their billable water up closer to 50%, and after testing all their meters we found that only about 10% were giving actual readings and most of the rest were under-reporting. By the time we were done fixing all the broken mains and faulty equipment they were around 80% billable and didn't need to raise their rates. I remember the head of the Town Council being VERY surprised that fixing things for real worked better than the band-aid patches that their water/sewer/dog catcher town manager kept doing.
"But I've done it like this for 30 years!" - the boomer town manager
What country was this in?
For larger towns and cities you get the compound problem of people just not bothering to pay the water bill. Amnesty periods are so long and shutoff times far in the future that you can get years of water without paying and then a whole other infrastructure needs to be set up to track down delinquencies.
We are losing revenue, so instead of proper maintenance we will bill higher. Sounds familiar.
@@JoranGroothengel Small Town USA.
As a former resident of Mississippi, with family still living there, I can attest that corruption in Mississippi politics runs very very deep. Financial mismanagement is rampant.
cosign
yeah, based on the video, there seems to be some systematic issues that need corrections, inspections and monitoring needs to be stricter and people need more accountability
@@Bonzi_Buddy "let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone". And Mr. Buddy replied, "Hey, Jesus, I'm him, get out of my way so I can start throwing".
@@stevechance150 Jackson, Mississippi has an average household income of $39,969. The US Average household income is $70,784.
So yes, this puts the city at a disadvantage when it comes to tax revenue to pay for much needed upgrades. They become dependent on state and federal politics where communities that do not have that baggage do not have to worry about that.
Even so, state and federal agencies can't toss money at them because these cities are woefully corrupt and mismanage such funds...typically in the use of their politically connected contractors or appointing their friends as bureaucrats to head those agencies. That just results in more corruption and wasteful spending.
I'm not sure what is up with the Jesus stuff. Why don't you include some useless scripture there like it means something as well, religious wacko.
Republican party is in charge so corruption is to be expected, yet people keep voting for them ........
As a professional engineer working in the Jackson area, I commend you for seeing the importance of this issue and covering it much better than any news media reports ever have. I think you reported most of the facts accurately and reported the story without trying to assign blame. Here is a fact you missed however. I believe the City of Jackson currently has only one professional engineer on staff. They have been critically short of engineers for years. Some exceptionally talented and dedicated engineers have served on the city staff during the nearly 30 years that I have been privileged to work with them, but they have almost all been lost to retirement, lack of pay, over work and lack of support. The Jackson water crisis illustrates the fact that engineered system need qualified engineers to oversee their operation and maintenance, or they will fail.
But can the engineers throw a football? Too many have faulty values...
nah apparently it's racism
This is interesting. My family was considering Jackson as part of a major move for us. I’m an engineer and was doing a little research and thought it wasn’t a good place for my career. On the other hand, maybe it is.
I just looked up jobs in Jackson. The city of Jackson is hiring a Senior Civil Engineer for water and the advertisement says pay is $52k to $63k. That’s almost half what I make right now as a manager of public works at a smaller town. Cost of living is cheap there, but they need to get real.
@@ImpulseAudioSpeakers Wow! Thanks for that info. That is less than starting engineer salary in Atlanta, Ga... And Atlanta isn't know for high engineering pay.
Boiling water is effective at eliminating pathogens, but does scant little for treating water for things like chemicals, heavy metals, or allergens.
Thank you for saying that.
I am in Ohio.. the train explosion with 15 different chemicals and boiling water does nothing.. we are suffering here.. and I'm not in the town it happened in, but it's affected the entire Ohio River!
@Saved By JESUS! Live 15 minutes away and lemme tell you, as someone who drinks a lot of water, this sucks. The water already wasn't the safest, but with this train, I'm going though water bottles like crazy m, and it sucks
If anything it’s worse it then concentrates them
Would attaching a pipe to a tea kettle to distill the water work?
@@katwilliams2950 I've seen other videos on UA-cam showing how to distill water at home. But even with a regular distiller it takes about 4 hours to get a gallon. I got one for about 200 bucks a couple years ago right before my city lost power to the water plants during the freezing weather. It definately helped.
😆 they mentioned the big freeze I was taking about around 19:00 minutes right after I posted this comment.
As a resident of Mississippi, I’d like to say how accurately you depicted this. Much of the city of Jackson’s infrastructure is outdated and barely handling its population. A lack of effective public transportation and aging electrical and water utilities is turning the city into a madhouse. Plus I’d really like to say I enjoy all your videos. I LOVE Civil engineering projects and seeing the science and logistics of putting it all together. Great job on your channel, it’s one of my favorites on UA-cam.
That's what you get for electing Democrats for the past 120 years.
I sympathize with all the affected people in Mississippi. As a person who grew up in Eastern Europe I understand how these things take years of mismanagement to occur. And I am angry that it is allowed to happen in the US. But then again, your country is as big as my continent, so it is hard to hold it to the same standards as our tiny countries.
You used to be able to travel all about the place on trams. I forget the exact end points, but it was said you could travel from (say) Dover NH to Pawtucket RI on trams.
But those were private, not public. So government took over. The problem you are seeing is not enough private transportation. The public transportation is doing what public things do.
@@petermgruhn lol troll. "not enough private transportation" ? Theres cars everywhere, there has never been more private transportation. Also no one was even talking about that
@@DomoKuchikan It is because Jackson's majority population is black. 84%? Mississippi is the most racist or second most racist state in the union. The Mississippi government will do the bare minimum to help black people. Mississippi has been a political cesspool since its inception. There are more criminals within the state government than in their prison system. American political corruption was created in Mississippi. Them and Louisiana are easily the two most corrupt states in the country.
Grady, me and my boys love your channel. We live in a rural area and would love to see an episode on gravel roads. The physics behind washboarding would be particularly interesting.
Took me and my Aussie brain a second to translate washboarding to corrugation. Yeah that would be interesting
@@Not_mera Had the same experience, thankfully you gave me the answer before my head hurt.
Typical Americans dumbing down terms. It's glasses > EYEglasses all over again.
@@ElusiveTy and its BBQ grill, or just a grill, but different cultures take different shortcuts over time. Have fun cooking on your Mattel toy ;)
I’d love to see the model Grady makes to explain the washboard phenomenon
Interesting. Not something I ever considered learning about but now I am, like now I really need to know
Excellent video. I worked in the industry and your video is on target. One town I worked in had aprox. 30 % of treated water go out in leaks. I had a company come in and do late night examination with listening devices on the hydrants to locate the leaks. In several places the water went to streams or ponds undected. One lady's duck pond dried up when we repaired a major leak. She was not to happy. Great video and well done. Thanks
Jackson's problem wasn't leakage, it was billing/collection over decades.
When they tried to fix it with a new metering system it got worse. Years of lawsuits followed and still over 50% was not being paid for.
People went for years without getting a single bill. Laundromats were paying bribes and got no bills. People who got bills just didn't pay them because they never cut service for lack of payment.
All this resulted in no money for maintenance.
I'm sure they had some leakage problems, and because of the corruption they could not afford to fix them so they added to the problem, but years of corruption and lack of oversight caused Jackson's water problems.
@@sendintheclowns7305 I read all about their issues, also I use to shut off customers not paying and landscapers stealing water from hydrants. They need to contract the system out to a private operator with some authority to remedy the issues.
Poor ducks.
@@watermanone7567 Exactly, but the city government has become one giant job program for friends and family of politicians.
Most contractors will NEVER work for the city of Jackson because they want to be paid in a timely matter, something Jackson is famous for NOT doing.
@@sendintheclowns7305 For once at least the failures of voters went in FAVOR of the residents, consumers, the poor. That almost NEVER happens. (Failure of government = failure of voters)
I'm from and currently live in Mississippi. The root of this problem is the amount of corruption and theft going on inside the state and city government. It is something the people have been actively fighting for decades, especially since hurricane Katrina.
I bet it also helps that the state government has been Republican forever and the city government has been Democratic forever. So no matter who you ask, it probably was the other guy's fault.
Without living there but living in SF for a time which has some similarities. This is it. The racism callout seems strange as Jackson has been under black mayorship for 25 years.
I linked to my sources in the description.
@@unvergebeneid is 2 sides of the same coin here.
Saying racism can't exist because black mayor is, in fact, racism. Racism is systemic, not just optics.
Reminds me of an old saying, "Being poor is expensive." I hope Mississippi gets the help it needs
We're considering changing our name to Ukraine or Israel.
Being Democrat is also expensive. Hinds County (Jackson) votes about 70-75% Democrat, and Democrats are generally very bad at running things. Add to that the natural tendency of all governments to do just about everything badly, and catastrophic mismanagement is the expected outcome.
No it won't. Ww all know it. Its ruled by a crime family
@@ncdave4lifethe state is is Red since the 80s. Stop your yapping.
@@jamesisaac7684 Jackson and a large percentage of the state isn't though. The mayor isn't and most politicians from the Jackson area aren't. Look at a map of D vs R by county and not by the state overall to see my point. Where I live, we vote blue for the local elections or else that person won't get elected at all (blue sherrifs, governors, mayors, constables, etc.) but vote red in the general election for senators and presidents, since the african american population is higher proportionately here in terms of white vs black than anywhere else in the nation, and blacks often outnumber whites depending on the county. The classic "Southern Dixie Democrat" is still a thing here.
Whenever there's civil engineering projects, people focus in hard on the bottom line: "What's it going to cost?" When the more relevant question is, "What's it going to cost NOT to do it?" When it comes to water infrastructure, we were taught that by Professors Cholera and Typhus a couple generations ago. They may have to come out of retirement to teach us again.
You only see one view and it is wrong. The taxpayers ALWAYS pay the fee. The scumbag politicians are the ones that spend the money elsewhere. Find all the past pols involved with this, and hold them accountable. If laws don't allow for that, then GEE. We found the actual problem huh?
simple and STRONG point !
I’ve been in water and wastewater treatment for 15 years now. I really appreciate and enjoy this type of content. It it great to see this type of information being available to the public. Thank you Grady! Keep up the good work!
Your work makes civilization possible. Without you and others like you, we'd fall. As many other civilizations have.
I'm still new to this job but I can tell you one of my first thoughts was about how much goes into this and there's nearly no knowledge, understanding, or public consideration on complexity and difficulty of these jobs and wishing there was an outlet for that information to get into the minds of the general public. For now, I think sharing videos like this are a great way to help people wrap their heads around the potential implications of under-supporting a critical utility like water and sewer.
@@jeremywillis3434 Same can be said about residential plumbing & roofing. People think it looks simple, & it does, but there’s complexity behind it, that most people will never be aware of.
This video is a nice distraction from East Palestine Ohio
@@jeremywillis3434 I'm an environmental science student. How'd you enter into the industry?
almost 20 years my summer job in college was working for the water district updating all of their valve diagrams. For the whole summer I rode out with a technician, verified the valve diagram, and updated the maps in AutoCAD as needed. It was actually pretty fun.
When a system, such as the water system in a city, has been knowingly neglected for years then such inaction rises to the level of criminal negligence.
Let me guess, going out on a limb here, corrupt city run by Democrats.
not just negligence but corruption.
**looking at you, Flint, Michigan**
@Karl with a K If you have problems with mud in rainstorms in shallow catchment basins, install wells below them during those events which naturally filters the water. Oh right, Democrats.
@Karl with a K Cold water is not frozen and does not break any pipes, and the pipes are underground below any freezing conditions, but ground seepage in bad roads does freeze, heaves the road and takes the pipes with it.
A mechanical engineer once told me that civil engineering was all about "dead things", things that don't move or interact. Your videos show exactly the opposite; dynamic systems that must change with the environment even if they prefer "slow changes". I just love your work.
You can't imagine what forces moving water can develop, either in tubes or in rivers. Hydraulic dynamic is a fascinating subject
I used to think the same thing, but now I'm getting my master's in structural engineering 😅 it's great how people like Grady can share his knowledge and help other people understand the world better
Yep. Nothing in this universe is dead, if you define it as "not moving or interacting." Even the tiniest known quantum entities move or interact.
Civil Engineering is extremely broad. A lot of people think it's just dirt work or steel buildings. Civil Engineering is literally and figuratively the foundation of all other engineering fields but at the end of the day they all are intertwined. Chemical Engineers make our materials better/safer/stronger/cheaper, mechanical/electrical engineers design the systems in/on our buildings and roads, and Civil Engineers make infrastructure that makes all of that possible (roads, ports, mines, buildings, water plants, power plants, and your house). Civil is the Macro while the others disciplines are the Micro.
Yeah it must've been a pretty ignorant mechanical engineer, especially they ought to know that everything is a spring, even things you think of as solid are always moving and stretching. And that goes for all forms of engineering. The only constant in this universe is change, and engineering is about how to deal with those changes.
I've lived in Jackson most of my adult life. Along with the reasons stated for the under funding of the water system there was a 2010 electronic water meter contract given to Siemens where faulty meters caused wild inaccuracies in billing prompting the city to halt water bill collections. Personally our bi-monthly bill at one point said we owed $1700! One estimate I've seen says it cost the city $450 million while the city only was able to recoup the $90 million of the original contract from a settlement with Siemens.
As a controls engineer in the water industry, this is a great overview of the responsibility the industry has, and an embarrassing reminder of how bad things can get. I interface with a lot of engineering firms for the design of water/wastewater facilities, and this channel does an excellent job at showing the concepts involved. Thank you.
do they still use cement asbestos pipes?
@@CoHostColby1 No. They stopped using that a long time ago.
I'm working on a house that has a sewage lift station down the block. Some maintenance was being done and I walked over and started talking to the workers. They were really nice and gave me a quick run through and explanation of how the system works. It smelled terrible but I've become so curious about the city infrastructures since finding your channel.
Civilization after civilization has fallen because they had no way to handle sewage.
I talked about that with the man who was pumping out my septic tank once (needs to be done about every 3 to 5 years) and how his work made civilization possible. He was incredibly pleased.
Hope you install a back-flow preventer.
@@veramae4098 Lol.
When I saw the picture of the children's hospital my heart sank. Glad to hear that facility is okay
Being From East Mississippi we have always had Boil water warnings through out my life living there. It's not just the capital, it's a State wide issue that has been going on for years.
I grew up in a wealthy county in Kansas, still had boil warnings throughout my childhood during the dry summers... It's not even being in wealthy areas with money to spare, it's just the states themselves refusing to put that money into infrastructure to help the people.
@@dinahmyte3749 it rains almost every afternoon, it's hardly ever dry. It's more corruption is the problem, money is taken from the area's it should go and being used for other reasons. Because they do not have a lot of transparency in government spending it hard to track where money ends up.
@@a3ttr1 I wasn't saying "oh ho ho, I've had it bad" I was pointing out that not even being in wealthy areas fixes underfunded infrastructure. I'll correct my comment with clarification.
Meridian MS is trying to be proactive about replacing old water, sewer and drainage lines. They're going to repave the streets around where the medical centers are, but they're going to replace all the water, sewer and drainage lines first at a cost of 3.5 million. And they're going to upgrade the sewage treatment plant per an agreement with the EPA a few years ago.
@@dinahmyte3749 Sorry if it came off that way. Didn't meant to say that, just there is a lot of unspoken and not reported issues with the infrastructure in Mississippi. In the state they go by the idea if your don't report it, it's not a problem and never happened. The power grid, water, and roads are in very bad shape there. I was just adding to this with what I have seen on the other side of the state and how it's not just a Jackson issue.
8:30 - One of the things I learned working in broadcasting is that it takes at *least* 6 employees *per billet* to staff something for 24/7 operation.
There are 4.3 weeks in a month, and you can't have .3 of an employee, so the minimum is 5... but that leaves you no slack for sickness or vacations, so you need at least 6 people *per position*. 7 is better. In particular, 7 makes it easier to avoid people having to work floating shifts, which are also hard.
If you have 7 jobs in your treatment plant, you need *seventy people* to staff it.
(Obviously, if you have 5 jobs that are the same position, you don't necessarily need a full spare person for all 5, but that's about all the slack you get.)
It's a *really big* problem.
And that’s assuming you can hire the right people to do the jobs.
I know how, mismanagement and corruption affects people, citizens and public infrastructure, because i live in Turkey. It's so sad to see those happened in Jackson, Mississippi. It's also an irony that it happened in a state named after second longest river in the entire World. Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink.
I live in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and it's wild to me that a capital city of a US state does not have drinkable tap water. I know that we have our issues with public utilities here so this is not coming from a high horse.
Actually, USA is mostly a developing country. This is for me just another clue to this and was not that surprising anymore. Thanks for your insight.
Yeah, I was surprised at that too. I live in South Africa, and we have massive issues with corruption and theft (see Eskom, our power utility...), and (at least in my province) we don't really have issues with water...
These problems in the US are a result of the same causes degrading Zimbabwe and South Africa, but they are simply a decade or two ahead of America.
@@LasseGreiner Why do you think that the US is a developing country? I do agree that our infrastructure and overall way of life is lacking compared to our European neighbors (and I do want to migrate out of the US..), but I don’t think it’s at the point of being a developing country. Many still consider the US to be developed.
@@supercroc8908 If the US were broken up into 50 different countries, many would fit the criteria of developing countries. Many of the states have more federal coming into the state than they have going out as Federal taxes. Some of those state's residents wrongly believe that they are financially supporting the larger, more developed states.
It reminds me of a great description of a Libertarian. A Libertarian is like a house cat. Fiercely independent, yet clueless about all the hidden infrastructure keeping them alive.
I'm south of Jackson so I avoided the problems, but I appreciate you covering this crisis in a place most people don't care about.
as a california T3 certified operator the failures of this system shock and appall me. I feel for the people of Jackson, and the operators of the plant who had to make a lot of very hard choices.
I've been in the water/ wastewater industry for 13 years (on the lab side of things) and I think your explanations in this video are great. I don't think most people know how complex a water system is, including the people running the city. Hopefully this incident and Flint will persuade our leaders to listen to the professionals in the industry about funding and public works. Thank you for bringing attention to this matter.
I do see three problems:
1. Groundwater reserves should be a public resource. So you can't tap them as a landowner, at least not without paying and proper regulation.
2. Bailout if things get bad enough. There's a general tendency in the US to bail out private / public entities with federal funds if things get bad enough (as long as their big enough). This incentives irresponsible risk taking. Intervention should be carried out earlier, but rather with the Federal Money be a lone. Then this should force Price / Tax increases to pay it back. That way, acting irresponsibly will come bite you and be discouraged.
3. Utilities are tied into the city Budget. They should rather be semi independent entities. Generating their own revenue and using it to maintain the infrastructure. This way, politicians can't slash the reinvestment and use the money to gain popularity by tax cuts.
Over here in Switzerland the Utilities are run either by publicly owned companies or by cooperatives (non-profit, have to reinvest all the profit). Public owned may deposit profits into the city budget. Cities Budget are voted on by direct democracy (Including tax rate). But Debt Limit applies: You go over it, state Authorities are forced to increase City taxes until you're below the debt limit again.
The result: Utilities are far more expensive (you pay in full, including infrastructure renewal), but their service quality generally is excellent.
Billions sent to Ukraine while America goes bust--on many levels.
As a life long resident of Jackson, MS. the boil ware alerts have been going on for the past 30+ years on average of once a quarter per year until the last few years. Both Democrat and Republican members of the city counsel and the mayor, , carry most of the blame for not providing enough of the monies brought in from the water billing to remain with the water department. They have been taking it for "pet projects" like installing roundabouts downtown, building a convention center that has had little use, and doing "band-aide fixes" to the water system (you can only install so many temp pipe clamps on a pipe until there is no room for more) , until it is a major break and a section of pipe has to be replaced, They have been reducing personal to maintain the system so no preventive maintenance can be done to the treatment stations or distribution system (like repairing minor leaks reported until they become a major break). I see no changes in the future as once these repairs are done and the system is back online my money is everything will go back to "status quo" of "if it is not broke don't fix it" and "If we don't report it it is not broken" as it is now. Thanks Grady for helping bring this out into the light again for others to know about.
Totally agree. I am a resident of Jackson. Before the water situation was addressed to the nation, the city of Jackson would turn off the water without warning. This goes back to the late 90s and 2000s. The city, county, and state are to blame for the crisis. Taxes are being raised but no results. Great video of awareness.
Good answer, also the need to get the water that is used by the public billed properly and the money only used to upgrade the water infastructure. Thanks
@@justnene2967 ask your current mayor where the 90 million went from the settlement with Siemens for faulty water meters that could have replaced all the steel pipe in the city but the money is nowhere to be found
@Justin Jones like the rest of the taxpayer's money. In the county and city council pocket. For example, the city doesn't have a contract for garbage collection (for over 3 years). The city claims they don't have the money to pay the current contractor but taxpayers pay garbage collection fees every month. So the money is going back in the politicians pocket. Same situation with infrastructure and vehicle registration. Car tags average $700 to $1100 every year and the roads are horrible.
omg someone that actually got this right. Thank god about this. Do you think you can rally people to just fund the water plant at all or do you think the people will not be willing to do so. Like actually hand the person the money at the water plant to actually go fix the problem? If you hand it to the government they will push the money around and only a part of it will go to them I know that for a fact. But to the person running the water plant do you think they will fix the problem or run away with the money also?
This is excellent journalism. This piece should have far more views. Spread the word!. Well done Grady!
Man, what a terrible situation. The residents of Jackson constantly losing access to clean water -- it must be terrifying for something so fundamental to be so uncertain. The fact that people working in the facilities were sounding the alarm for years and just being ignored is, to me, criminal negligence by the city government. There are so many stories like this, where saving a penny is more important than respect for what someone's in charge of. I keep thinking about the recent train derailment and vinyl chloride spill in Ohio, and wondering how anyone could consider their personal wealth more important than the consequences of carelessness.
"wondering how anyone could consider their personal wealth more important than the consequences of carelessness"
That's easy: it's *other* people who face the consequences. Capitalism promotes sociopaths and psychopaths to the executive suite, so if something isn't *their* problem, they don't care about it.
@@jursamaj Intellectually, I do understand. There's no off-switch for the capitalist machine. I just can't put myself into the shoes of someone that places no inherent value on human life. It's probably a good thing that I'm not able to empathize with that, but it also makes for a terrifying world sometimes.
Conservatives refuse to spend money on things that everyone relies on. Until there's an emergency and they need 5x the amount to fix it than if they had just properly paid, staffed, maintained, and repaired their systems decades ago. It depresses me. Republican views are just incompatible with modern life.
Thank you Grady for covering this crisis!
It's heartbreaking for the residents of Jackson. It's interesting that Mississippi is the only state that does not have a Water and Wastewater Agency Response Network (WARN). I emailed Senator Wicker about it and learned that Mississippi chose to do something different and has Rural Water Emergency Assistance Cooperative under the Mississippi Rural Water Association. Apparently a lot of mutual aid came through that channel and still may be helping the City.
Another challenge is the expansive clay in and around Jackson called Yazoo Clay...which is a serious challenge. Roads and houses often buckle and shift due to Yazoo Clay here...which doesn't help the water / wastewater system pipes.
Yep.
They stayed away from (warn) so it would be easier to steal money that should have gone back into the upkeep of the system.
As a WTP Operator, everything described in this video is our worst nightmare. Occasional BWA's are common, but this would be horrible. My hat is off to those operators in Jackson who actually had to deal with this while not being compensated fairly. I hope they find better jobs at other facilities and leave the city of Jackson as soon as they can. This is exactly what happens when you don't maintain your infrastructure. This all started on a political level, as most issues do.
After 2 years in my home in Jackson, and 6+ trips to the water department (with blank checks in hand) - I have never received a bill for water. Only one of the countless issues in this city.
Jackson resident here- it's crazy that over the last 10 years, each of these events bleeds together into one general sense of "this will never change." I know that's not true, things can change. Takes honesty and transparency and better leadership. Thanks for walking through the story.
It's going to get much worse, but slowly enough that people will tolerate it. Western civilization is going through catabolic collapse.
It takes votes. Mississippi is one of, if not THE, reddest states. You (maybe not you personally) vote for anti-government politicians. You vote to get rid of taxes, public funding, and environmental regulation. And then you beg the feds to give you $800 million that other, much more democratic, states finance. Stop begging for help and pay for your own infrastructure. Stop pretending to be victims. Stop voting for red clowns, or pack your bags and take your money to a better state. Votes are good but ultimately money is the only thing anyone listens to. You won't be getting any of my tourism dollars, that's for sure. (Sorry, William, nothing personal)
It's gonna take an outside entity to swoop in and fix the problem, because the local government can't be trusted to manage the funds and local construction companies can't be trusted to operate with integrity.
14:46 ... the irony of that large water fountain when talking about crazy water shortages :/
@@pvic6959 the difference between potable water and regular water
I only expect to hear more stories like this in the coming decades. Cities and states across the US have been systematically mismanaged, and the predominate work culture is so toxic that the talented people we need to solve these problems want nothing to do with it.
Things like THIS are what federal governments should be spending time and money on, not shoving woke politics down everyone's throats and sending billions of dollars abroad !! 😡😡😡
@@dankelly5150 because you think the previous republican governments did better?! As OP said, this is mismanagement and toxic work culture, things both parties are culprit of. BTW the Mississippi is a fully republican state since decades, and if the intervention had to come from federal order it's mainly because the state itself didn't do its job prior to that.
Mississippi is just a failed state. It was when run by Democrats and Republicans. There's no saving it. It's America's Haiti
@@dankelly5150the federal government has no money! This is YOUR and MY money they are pissing away! If these folks voted these morons into their government then why should you and I have to bail out their dumb, foolish decisions? Let them learn the hard way. There is no such thing as.a free lunch!
@@dankelly5150 lol
Videos like these are extremely important in understanding how our society functions. From politics to engineering issues, having some grasp on all of this is extremely beneficial in tackling and understanding future problems, and with how current US infrastructure is, these problems are only going to become more apparent and compound further.
Or rather how it doesn't function. As the population trends toward 100% African, the probability of clean drinking water being plumbed in approaches zero. Jackson, Mississippi is currently 78.55% African. Most of the way there, water's almost gone.
Hey Sam, your KKK robes are showing...
Thank you for presenting a complex engineering and political situation in a factual manner. In the U.S. we take reliable access to utilities including potable water, sewer, storm water, natural gas/propane, and electricity for granted. Hopefully, this presentation has a significant number of viewers to educate everyone on the importance and significance of maintaining a reliable utility infrastructure. Again, well done and keep up the excellent videos.
If you haven't heard of it, definitely look into Philadelphia's Green Storm Water Management system. As an alternative to a large sewer expansion the city has started building green infiltration areas, such as roof top gardens, permeable pavement, and retention basins in public spaces. I was able to work on that project with the department of water and really found both the political and engineering side of it fascinating.
Nothing amazing about this. Green anything is a waste of money and time
There are always cost overruns and zero return.
Sounds interesting? Could you point to articles i can read?
@@dplj4428
Dunno about articles, but the first time I heard about Philadelphia's plans for storm water management was this video: ua-cam.com/video/coXe8_xnAOs/v-deo.html
The part about Philadelphia is at the end, but the rest of the video covers related concepts. I particularly like the idea of usable public spaces that double as flood protection reservoirs when needed.
Hello Grady, I really appreciate your content and I have a question for you. I live in a very cold climate (Ontario, Canada) and it leads me to wonder how potable water/waste water plants function in very cold climates where the temperature in winter may not rise above freezing. Don't those large open-air ponds freeze over? What other challenges are inherent in cold climates for water treatment plants?
Infrastructure in extreme climates sounds like quite an interesting topic. Hopefully this comment pleases the youtube algorithm
I would be interested as well. My bets are on exothermic reactions at the waste water facility and keeping things moving. Either that or a totally different approach to wastewater treatment in general. I wonder if underground pipes then have to be insulated?
i would love a video on this too. i'm in texas, same as grady, so i've first hand seen the devastating effects of the cold weather on this sub tropical region. i would love to see more about how critical infrastructure are designed to keep functioning in extremely cold areas.
As a Brit married to a Hungarian I find this subject fascinating - with the difference in the climates of the two countries.
In much of Britain, it rarely gets below freezing or above 30 degrees, so physical infrastructure is relatively easy - it simply doesn't have to cope with extremes. But in Hungary it can get down to -20, or worse, in winter, and above 40 in the summer.
So, considering something like road and pavement surfaces, which have to cope with both long-duration freezing conditions AND tar-melting heat, it's no wonder they generally aren't in good condition in Hungary.
But Hungarian motorways and main roads are generally fine. How do they make major roads climate-proof? And, if they CAN do that for key roads, why can't they do it for ordinary highways, city streets, pavements, etc?!
I've been in infrastructure management for 15 years. The larger reservoirs are large enough and have enough flow that you only get surface ice. The smaller reservoirs are underground. Pipelines are buried deeper underground than in warmer climates -- which makes repairs more challenging. Performing a pipeline inspection is always fun when the cold air entering a water main break causes an ice sheet to form on the surface of the water remaining inside the pipe.
Having been to Jackson quite a few, I can assure you the pipes were gonna break anyway, because breaks were already rampant. It's part of why the roads are irredeemably terrible. Pipe gets a leak and it takes months before it's really noticed and more months to get it worked on. Even then, often it's only a clamped on patch, which just means somewhere else in that old pipe is going to break within a few months.
Some of the nearby cities, like Pearl, aren't much better with fewer broken lines, proportionately, but the same shoddy repair approach
I been working here for 4 weeks replacing the gas lines since the houses blew up and I have not seen a water department worker yet, water leak everywhere we dig, call them to let them know but no one comes, they just don’t care
@@Drewdayz2419 Some wonder why no one wants to live in these places, but when a home can become like it's in a 3rd world nation over night and stay that way for weeks to months, that's a hard problem to ignore.
I live in Rio de Janeiro, we have one of the largest WTP in the world and we had frequent problems with pollution and algae in the water. Fortunately the state government decided to act and is expanding the treatment infrastructure. In addition, part of the water and sewage service in the metropolitan region has been divided into areas that are now managed by different private companies.
and that helps?
I lived in that city for many years, and mom still lives there. This is more of a failure of the politicians over several decades, and not paying attention to the "out of sight, out of mind" infrastructure.
What do you expect from a black nationalist socialist mayor?
Thing about south is most don't bury pipes below frost line like we do here in the north. Polar Vortex we had zero breaks.
Thank you for bringing more attention to our city’s ongoing issues
Miss.ians need to stop voting RED.
@@veramae4098 it’s not that simple. I’m from a small southern town, where many republicans run unopposed, & have for the last 20 years, many are related.
I working in the drainage and erosion industry in Jackson, Ms.
I love watching your channels, but seen this gave me goosebumps.
my entire family is from Jackson MS, it’s terrible how corrupt they are as a city
nothing about this seems like "corruption" it has a low tax bases. not enough money to hire good people. reality is in the rest of the world. state and fed goverment spend ALOT of money supporting their cities, and their infrastructure. its extremly clear the state of MS is 100% at fault for refusing to provide the needed money and support years ago.
As someone from Hong Kong, I'm so used to boiling tap water before drinking I have trouble understanding "boil water notice" back when I first heard it before. 🤣 I was like "is that a cool code name for something?"
Great video as always, Grady
Unfortunately there is lead, and other harmful chemicals in jacksons water that does not clean up or break down during boiling. This has a direct negative effect on the children and citizens.
Man, I was from Vietnam and back then at least half of our fridges were filled with boiled water. I live in the US now and most people here really take the quality of their tap water for granted. In fact, many Americans travel overseas (like Mexico) and unknowingly drink from the tap and get sick.
I'm from UK and boiling water is the normal thing in my household
Rapidly growing countries like China or Vietnam are sorta suffering from their growth in that it's basically impossible for infrastructure to keep up with rapidly growing populations and economies. Infrastructure projects by their nature takes many years and sometimes decades to build, meanwhile growth changes from year to year, so it can become impossible to predict demand in the future and you might be in a more or less constant state of construction, which also puts bottlenecks on existing systems. Not to mention the fact that regulators also have a much harder job when growth is so rapid and large, it can be impossible to make sure that new housing developments actually stick to their regulated size and just like infrastructure the regulation departments might not be able to keep up in size with the growth. The rapid growth will also mean that there's a direct and huge economic incentive to keep regulators constrained and ineffective.
Western countries essentially have a much easier job since most of the growth already happened and all of the basics of infrastructure and regulation are already in place. They're not playing catch up and so can much more easily keep up with demand.
@@hedgehog3180 combine that with sustainability efforts and there could be something there. Im aware that rainwater isn't clean, but if the area isn't particularly polluted,it could be cleaner than the kind of tap that gets you sick. Collecting rainwater with big roof funnels and multiple layers of filter seems like it could be cool. I'm aware it's slot of effort but it's independent extra water
This is why you don’t ignore maintenance. It always bites you at the worst time like all these natural disasters.
7:57 it looks like what was effecting the failure of the plant was horrible documentation, toxic work environment, and massive under compensation, leading to a high turnover rate, leading to the facility being severely understaffed.
You should do a piece on the Red Hill fuel spill on Oahu, Hawaii. The military is refusing to do anything about it and defying EPA and local government orders! On top of that they had another fuel spill on Haleakala.
One thing I don't think you touched on enough was the piping system itself. The system is generations old and uses various materials including lead piping, so much of the system is now brittle or corroded. To make matters worse many of these pipes are buried shallow in the Earth so a big freeze easily reaches them and the soil around the area is highly expansive too (called Yazoo Clay). So unfortunately it's not just the water plant, the whole piping system itself is in desperate need as well.
Thats something i was wondering about, a ton of cities north of Jackson have surface water supplies and almost no issue with the cold. In my area 4ft is considered the frost line so i assume municipal water has the top of the pipe at like 5ft down so they can't be affected by long and cold winters.
Are these pipes only 6in down or something? The ground is warm and they should know that they get periodic cold blasts even if on average they are a warm climate, so they should be prepared for the annual arctic blast or whatever its gets called.
Also, lead pipes aren't technically bad because under normal conditions the biofilm inside all pipes protects the pipes so lead won't enter the water. But ideally we should remove them all to prevent another Flint Michigan where someone adds the wrong additive and suddenly the lead is flaking off into the water.
This video alone deserves an Emmy. Your storytelling, diction and subject matter expertise is superb. Kudos to you, and keep up the good work.
I'm a native Mississippian. And much of my family still lives in Jackson although I haven't lived in the south since 1990. Thank you for bringing to light the struggles the people of Jackson are dealing with and some of the roots of the issues.
I saw the thumbnail of the spillway and remembered being a child fishing in that area.
Keep up the good work, Grady! Many thanks.
Sorry to hear of your problems. The Republican party is in charge so corruption is to be expected, yet people keep voting for them ........
The last Republican in charge of Jackson left office in 1988. It’s been unified democratic control for over 30 years. The state isn’t in charge of local water treatment plants, that’s the city and county.
@@kovu159 15:53 to work properly those system often need funding from the state level. Not saying this is fault of republican, but just it is more complicated than the color of the state/city
@@kovu159 So you expect a city to pay to completely overhaul its entire water system on its own? Something that always requires funding from the state level? Seems like you're just a racist trying to shift blame. And "seems like" is being generous.
@@alexrogers777 It's racist to think a city should maintain city services? What do you think cities do? Also, how is failing to maintain water infrastructure dependent on race? That's a pretty wild thing to say.
VERY good video, thank you so much for this!!
Yet another resident of Mississippi here - not far south of Jackson, in fact. The city's troubles with infrastructure are sadly not unique - such problems are happening all over the state, to some degree. Jackson has it very bad and it's very very public now, but it's not at all the only place. Petal (next door to my own city, Hattiesburg) is right on the Leaf River, and every single time it rains for more than an hour, there are places in the town that immediately flood. I have no firm info on what their water quality is like, but having known my husband's (very) extended family across three or four counties - almost all of them would rather have their own wells than deal with "city water," because of how poorly maintained and managed so many of the systems are. I count myself lucky: where I live, there have been very few boil water notices and the only time my neighborhood completely lost water access was right after Hurricane Katrina. But I'm also within metaphorical spitting distance of the county hospital, and all the infrastructure that supports that hospital kind of radiates out a bit and helps its immediate vicinity. When power was finally starting to get restored in the city after the hurricane, the hospital's part of the grid was the very first one to come up - and one day later, our neighborhood got power too. Same with water.
But even so, there is chronic trouble and it's very obvious. Big projects are ongoing right now because we finally have a decent mayor not lining his pockets; but it's anyone's guess if those projects can be completed before the current mayor changes. There are huge problems here with staffing the sanitation department, evidenced by the insane schedule forced on just the garbage truck workers. From the things I've read on local news sources, Jackson has ALL those same problems we do, just worse, and for longer.
Everyone in the state is really hoping that Jackson can get back on its feet, but more than half of us are poor and/or in various under-represented minorities. And from our lowly perspective, the outlook isn't too rosy... But here's hoping that the politicians will surprise us for once.
good luck to you. I really hope politicians will do what they are for. SERVE the PEOPLE.
This is my home state.. This channels is invaluable.. This was invaluable to me. I can’t wait for more content!!
Water problems are happening even in the rural parts of the country. Maine has been dealing with pfas in ground water. This comes from spreading sludge from cities and industry. The legal limit is set at 20 ppt Pfas. My drill well was tested because of spreading sludge on a farm 5 miles away. (When originally spread the farmers where told that the sludge would be good and had been tested) For almost 4 months I could not drink my water boiling would not help. Many many others have this problem. So I lived on bottled water that whole time. It's a lot easier to boil water but only being able to use bottled water a bit harder. More and more cities are finding that their public water is contaminated with Pfas that are a health problem. Installation of activated charcoal filters took out the pfas. Maine has made regulations about this. The EPA has made recommendations about the levels and are testing for it. Tests are expensive ($800 each). This is becoming a health problem all over the world.
Yeah, it sucks, although we moved to a reverse osmosis system. Bottled water isn't the only option. But yeah... really sucks. It's really not cities that are to blame, though, it's 100% unregulated industry which are also building on sites in rural areas since the land is cheap and then lying their way into being allowed to build and operate, or taking advantage of loose laws.
I requested your book as a Christmas gift and got it! It is so interesting and well illustrated, I'm hoping it helps inspire my son to consider a career in engineering.
I am from Detroit, MI. Jackson, MS, is my second home. I will forever cherish the time i lived there. Its a beautiful place. The people there are just like everyone else, but different.
The women are beautiful
I'm looking forward to the "East Palestine Derailment Disaster" video. Oh and don't forget to recap on the condo complex that collapsed in Florida! I am very intrigued to learn more about that tragedy.
Thank you for raising the issues behind the Jackson, MS water issues. I know you like to stick with the engineering of things and the complex engineering of the Jackson, MS water infrastructure certainly contributes to their problems. But, as you stated, often there is much more behind the engineering that factor into the issues that cause their failure. I think this was one of your best segments yet, precisely because you did not shrink from the root causes of this crises.
"didn't shrink the root causes of the crises" is such a great way of stating it!
Exactly. Even in engineering its really hard to fix the root causes of problems when the powers that be at the state level don't want them fixed.
Great video as always Grady!!
Excellent video! I live in Memphis and within the last few years we had 3 water outages, which we never experienced anywhere else. One was random and the other two were as a result of the cold weather. The water outages and prolonged boil orders here got so bad last time that bottled water was sold out everywhere and the city was offering 5 gallon buckets of non potable flush water to people with outages.
I didn't know this was a state capital. I had heard of the water issues in Flint and Jackson, but that this kind of neglect of critical infrastructure was happening in a state capital of the world's largest economy says a lot about how defunct the political system of that country really is.
See which party ruled both cities.The problem isn't the entire system,just half of it.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 Definitely both. Most (R) are just misspelled (D). Issue is corruption, which lives in large numbers throughout the entire political system.
I’ve got a cool story you might like to cover, I live next to the army base fort Devens, and our water got contaminated with PFAS, this was a synthetic insulator used for military that can’t be destroyed, it got into our water and for over a month the town bought everyone Poland springs until they could get a flirtation plant up and running
Appreciate you using your calm, calculating engineering approach to covering this issue, Grady. There are a lot of good reasons for problems of this magnitude to spark outrage. But, then the problem gets that much harder to fix amidst the noise of the outrage - we lose sight of how we got there. I do hope the residents of Jackson get the water delivery they deserve eventually, but there’s no way it’s going to come quickly any way this gets cut.
The mob never realizes who is actually to blame. You know who caused Jackson's issues? Jackson voters. They have voted in incompetent socialists for generations.
It's the same reason LA, Seattle and New York are also such great places to live. Run by self described socialists, yet the only people who can afford to live there are ultra rich.
@@TheOwenMajor Flint Michigan has had similar water problems under their Republican leadership. Texas can't keep the lights on in the cold, and I know of no more Republican state in the union. I very much doubt this is an issue solely of "incompetent socialists."
Even if it were the issue, running water should not be a partisan divide. I'd love to know the justification for the state's Republican government ignoring this glaring issue in the state's own capital city. Grady's own video here suggests they had lots of warning before any of this happened.
To me, it seems far more likely this is an issue of water authorities squabbling over budgets and jurisdiction, as every government organization I've seen falls victim to eventually. Combine this with a country-wide history of under-investment in infrastructure, and we have a recipe for disaster.
@@McTroyd a couple instances is a coincidence...more than that makes a pattern. If ya'll seriously think the R attached to the goverments involved isn't a core part of the problem... ya'll are going to keep "fixing" preventable problems for centuries.
Republican states & cities get what they deserve.
@@McTroyd I agree. I don't know when the mayor was elected but this kind of lack of funds and maintenance certainly occurred way before his mandate. And yes republican partisans seems to elude the fact the state itself is republican and they apparently didn't try to prevent the rot of their capital city, which should be the symbol of their state.
IMHO all of those old white republican elected people probably live in some fancy suburbs or ranches, they just commute to the city and they don't care about the poor (and black) people living there. They probably financed the off-grid wells for the hospitals instead of fixing the main issue.
Yay!! Time to nerd out on some civil engineering. Who woulda thought I'd have grown up to be this kind of nerd. Thanks Grady!
You mean you weren't nerdy when you were a child?
@guynxtdork oh no, I was! Lol I just didn't admit it so freely back then.
There are many places across the U.S. without good/potable water. I live near the town of Maypearl, TX, and our water has a PH about 9, TDS off the charts, it's salty, etc. When you wash your hands or dishes with it, you're left slimy-feeling after the soap is all rinsed off. I can't use it for myself, my dog, my cats, or my aquarium. And judging by how much RO water the local dollar store moves, no one else is drinking it, either.
There's a large leak in the pipe that leads to my house down the street that washes away the road every couple of years - most assuredly not the only spot like it. We are issued boil water notices very frequently. My own meter doesn't accurately measure water since my bill didn't go up after a leak at the shut off valve went unnoticed for a month, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that, either. Unlike Jackson, we do usually have water available. But it seems we're heading in a similar direction in a hurry. We won't get any press about it, though, since we're a small town of a few thousand.
Have you considered getting a rainwater tank? If you're collecting your own water off your own roof, you're in control. Even if your air and roof are so dirty you have to filter the water to make it drinkable, you still have that water - it's yours, and your tank tops itself up every time it rains.
@@tealkerberus748 I do collect rainwater for my aquarium. Don’t have the time or income to set up anything larger at the moment.
As a now no retired water and waste waster operator and manager of 25 years I find it hard to understand how Flint and Jackson happened unless there was no enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act at several levels.
A Public Utility has the obligation to provide a safe product, dependable service, and a rate structure that provides for sustainability. Keeping rates artificially low will make someone later pay for the system that you are wearing out today. All to often, particularly in smaller systems, depreciation of assets is not accounted for as a real cost.
You did a great job presenting the issues. Love your channel.
Flint and Jackson share the same root cause of their water woes.
Flint happened due to overtaking the city mgmt due to 'failing' parameters. The new overseer changed the water supply to own their own instead of buying water from Detroit supply. Unfortunately they did not hire knowledgeable folks to run it and they failed to add the chemical that adheres to pipes so they don't corrode them. Add older, lead pipes. Add a government who ignored it cuz the yes men told them otherwise. My dad was a civil engineer and had it pegged within a month. If it happened in west Bloomfield or other richer areas it would not have been ignored. They switched back to Detroit, which wasn't necessary but political. It wasn't the water supply itself that was the problem, it just added to the cost of fixing it. The city of Flint now has completely new pipes all the way to the individual houses, and has lower lead levels than many other places in Michigan. Damage done, but keep in mind my 50yr old self was exposed to tons of lead in the 70s between gasoline, paint, etc and managed ok, as did most of us from that era, so don't write off these kids, they have great potential. When you know better, do better. I do know a lot of food (WIC and SNAP) and healthcare ( Medicaid) was increased to this area to help offset the lead exposure.
I live in a city next to Jackson. I moved here, away from Jackson years ago. Jackson used to be a great city. But now it is riddled with crime and high taxes. The city council and mayor don't have the leadership or foresight to solve these problems. And yes the corruption is as bad as the finger pointing. It is not just the water supply that is bad in Jackson. The streets are a mess with pot holes deep enough that a senior girl in high school was killed when she drove into one. All the business have left for surrounding cities and counties. Jackson could have been the hub of the south since it is between Dallas and Atlanta and between Memphis and New Orleans. But the slimey greedy leadership has let it all go to waste now. And the worst thing is they keep getting reelected....
It is truly amazing to me how such a small percentage of people can foul up in such a huge way.
What is the race of all those elected officials in Jackson? Because OP thinks it is redlinings fault for all these issues.
The Mississippi governor needs to be held accountable. This issue has been bought to his attention for years, but he didn't care because Jackson is a majority Black city.
@@jasong7128 how does redlining work here?
@@alyssam1159 Do you know how government works? Currently the State Government is threatening to take over the city of Jackson's water supply issues and the Mayor, City Council, and citizens are telling them to back off. They don't need them to fix it. I would assume the Governor would get similar treatment.
As a professional engineer, I drive trains back and forth day after day. I have seen many small towns and drank plenty of water from said towns. TPS report after TPS report, I can attest to the absence of oversight in my line of work. I have had incontinence issues stemming from my heavy consumption of water as a result of kidney stones, and my fear of ever having another. Utility systems are running behind. I have interfaced with water meters, water fountains, and water features. My favorite thing about water is how delicious it tastes when I take my morning vitamins, but nothing beats a good egg fried on the sidewalk in the Missouri sun.
lol
One thing you failed to mention is the type of soil they have to deal with. We call it "Yazoo clay," and it is constantly moving. It also effects building foundations. This coupled with decades of neglect, mismanagement and a bit of good old fashioned corruption has a lot to do with this problem. As far as people leaving, I don't blame them. Per population numbers Jackson has the highest murder rate in the nation.
Sounds like they need to switch to welded PE pipes
@@SonsOfLorgar Welded PolyEthylene pipes?
Some very important points, and well covered. I follow your channel and have been on numerous tours of infrastructure just because I'm curious about it, but I know full well I'm ignorant of a lot of it. I keep seeing disaster after disaster (Texas ice storm, Flint water crisis, Jackson water crisis, etc.) and it's hard not to feel like "the walls are closing in" with underinvestment in infrastructure.
We have had our share of bridge and dam failures, as well as my town needing to bail out and eventually annex the neighboring town when their sewer treatment system was failing. So it definitely feels close to home. But "feels" is not reality, so I'm trying to stay grounded as I learn more about this.
I am a long-time resident of Jackson. The major work for the water system was built in the late forties and early fifties, and it used good old state contract iron pipes. Now, 70 years later, you can poke a hole in those iron pipes with your finger.
I live in a completely different country. But we are currently losing 60% of all of our water into the ground every second of every day for 2 years. We don't get boil water notices (we can generate pressure without needing to pump it) but we do often get told to save water because the reservoirs can't hold enough. Its effectively the same problem here. Its really infuriating knowing that there is 30 years of poor and deferred maintenance that isn't going to be solved overnight and has made the entire system on borderline breaking point.
I'm not sure you mean what you seem to mean.
If you were losing 60% per second, then you'd be losing 99% every 5 seconds. In 15 seconds one million liters would be reduced to just one liter. One hundred billion liters would be reduced to 100 milliliters in 30 seconds.
Does time matter? Other than the 2 year period, if you are losing 60% of the treated water regardless if it was every second, minute, hour, day or month.
Either way, that represents a large cost in electricity and chemicals that are essentially saturating the ground and its really quite shocking that somebody would keep deferring maintenance when the losses amount to so much.
@@shanelmurray3448 yes, time does matter. If they were losing 60% of their water every second they would have no water at all in less than a minute.
@@shanelmurray3448 It absolutely matters.
What they probably meant, all over exaggeration aside, was that they've lost 60% of their water to the ground over 2 years, or that each day, 60% of that day's water production is lost.
@@ElusiveTy but if your losing 60% of your water does a timeframe matter. Because everything you produce you lose 60% of. Timeframe gives a quantity. But the sub times don't add value to the statement
Between Christmas and new years the Asheville area had a bunch of pipes burst which caused us to lose water for over a week. It was pretty eye opening as to how much your lifestyle changes without water. Luckily we had a pool and hot tub full of water so we could use the hot tub to rinse off and the pool water to flush the toilet.
lUcKiLy We HaD a PoOl AnD a HoT tUb
@@anidnmeno i mean it does sound like they came in handy
Great video! Would love to see one about the Phoenix, AZ water system and the challenges supporting a large city in the desert.
I never thought I’d see the city I live and work in as the subject of one of your videos. It’s interesting to see the way you broke down the issues. The water issue in Jackson has been an issue for many years and it’s mostly the direct result of mismanaged and corrupt government at the local level.
What you said is all plainly obvious. Now, the interesting part will be - how you hold the ones actually accountable, accountable. They are all retried and kicking back now living off the corrupt money. What will be done to them? Nothing??? Exactly.
But do the ppl of your state want "more" federal oversight, or they want to stick with state right? Your local government does not seem to serve them very well, because of lack of funding. But they pay "lower" tax, right? The people are led to focus on red meat issues (guns, CRT, wokeness, etc.), not basic infrastructures. But they will pay eventually, usually astronomically in the end.
I live in Texas, and familiar with these failures.
@@hdlam1 you seem to have a few basic assumptions wrong - the city is 78.55% black... so you can take your stereotypes about red state whites and stick them where they came from.
There's no tax base because of rampant criminality - anyone who can afford to move away has mostly already done so since the 70s.
You're correct about one part - yeah they're going to pay astronomically - well someone will anyway.
This makes the case for the private wells so common in rural settings.
Jackson was wild, i grew up further north and the thing that blew my mind when i worked there for a few months is that there were 2 of every chain restaurant, I imagine you can guess why
I always love how sewage water looks so terrible and after some cleaning it looks perfectly fine. ah the marvel of human engineering
I enormously value your videos on water resources & water infrastructure. Your coverage is excellent and I really appreciate your detailed analysis of water problems as I work on starting my own career in environmental & water resources. Thank you for your excellent work in this area & I look forward to your future topics as well!
Thank you for calling out the fact that Jackson hasn't simply been ignoring this problem, but has been going without the necessary support of local and federal government.
I grew up in Mississippi and it's long been the case that the state government ignores the needs of the capitol city and Hinds county in general. It's upsetting and only hurts the state. Unfortunately I don't see this changing any time soon.
Don't blame the Federal government. They have always taken more in Federal aid than they contributed. MS has, like all southern states, been a drag on the entire national treasury. Blame the idiots people there elect. Good 'ole boy's robbing the state blind.
Like many people in our area, it seems that you’ve been conditioned to believe the city hasn’t mismanaged funds - and that’s putting it lightly.
In the netherlands you can be almost guaranteed that tapwater is drinkable. When its not there is a HUGE sign telling so
Same here in the UK. There's a HUGE stink going on at the moment with one of our water companies having to cut the supply for a few days to half a city of 300K people twice in as many months because of water main issues. Questions were asked in Parliament and you can bet there'll be compensation paid. I drink water from the tap with not a second thought (though I do put it through a softening filter for making tea :) ). It's just incomprehensible to me that a city in a supposedly developed nation can't supply its people with potable water.
Finland here. Same.
It’s the same here in the US…. With the sole exception of Jackson and Flint.
That holds for almost the entirety of the United States. However, it must be said that the Deep South is closer to countries like Haiti in terms of standard of living. The infant mortality of Mississippi is the same as in Kazakhstan.
Mississippi is one of our most backwards states, one that takes pride in their stupidity and bigotry. Nothing failing like this in Mississippi is surprising. The fact that they even told people is the more surprising part.
As a former PWS operations supervisor, I can tell you this problem is everywhere! Not necessarily to this extent. No valve/hydrant mapping (what's GIS?), data collection, hydrant flushing, valve exercising. Hydrant flushing is a good one, I used to take both static and dynamic pressures as well as flow via pitot all written down, but on paper. I must have spent months personally getting everything scanned in digitally. Most of our maps were on 3"x5" cards for both hydrants and gate valves, as well as service connections. All in one place. What if there was a fire? Everything went on CD-R record-wise and was kept in at least 2 locations. @7:52 that is something to look at...lack of everything!!! Wow! Almost a snowball effect, can't flush, because pipes will break, water quality deteriorates...people out of water. Invest in INFRASTRUCTURE!! Also, competent, accordingly compensated operators!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bunch of words that mean nothing. Hold the PAST politicians accountable or do nothing.
@@eriklarson9137 Say that when you have no water at your tap!
Oh great, now Practical Engineering is pushing CRT /s
I'll be honest, I instantly thought of Flint Michigan. Speaking of...
Another corrupt Democrat city.
Thank you so much for spotlighting this issue. I'm hoping that this might be the first in a series. The world could use more calm, instructive voices explaining the importance of infrastructure and why it needs money to be maintained.
I appreciate you presenting all angles of the story even if you didn't feel qualified to speak on a few subjects
If the drinking water system is so broken, I can only imagine the state of the sewerage system.
Saw this yesterday on Nebula. Thanks Grady
A video on the Washington Aqueduct, which is managed by the US Army Corp’s of engineers to provide water to Washington, DC would be a great follow up to this video. It’s a distribution network with a variety of different processes, including multiple sedimentation basins, and a surplus of water that allowed them to sell to neighboring areas in Northern Virginia. The city is also undertaking a massive project to hire tunnels under DC to move storm water away from the urban center faster.
Thank you so much! You bring so much clarity, compassion and insight to subjects I want to more educated on every single time. I deeply appreciate all the time it has obviously taken you to make such a professional video. I'm always fascinated by the world around me, more so thanks to you. You work is work that so many benefit from!
Suggestion for a video: utility distribution (water, electric, heat) in a place where it routinely gets -20F in the winter: central Alaska. I live in Fairbanks and we have quite a few special considerations to ensure all piping is below the frost line.
Also, have you done a video on the Alaskan pipeline? It's an incredible bit of infrastructure that boggles the mind in terms of complexity, size, and elegance of the chosen solutions. Basically, how do you keep an 800-mile tube structurally sound in an area known for earthquakes, powerful and destructive wildlife, and wild temperature variations from -70F to +70F?
Agree, I would also like to see this. Thanks
-90 to +100, I'll admit that these are more outlying temperatures, but they exist.
Also, you forgot the wildfires.
And elevation changes.
And permafrost.
😁
@@jonanderson5137 Yup. All of the above.
I'd love to see a video on this, I live in a region where the minimum depth to bury water lines is 8ft below grade.
I get this feeling the water grid in Jackson is quite possibly at the worst stage something could be in. Rip and Replace. like a large scale, far more expensive version of when you need to totally gut a house because its been so neglected.
I went to college in Jackson MS. In 2008 a water main broke, and we were kicked off a college campus with 2 hours notice. I had nowhere to sleep for days.
Thank you for talking water infrastructure. It's a complex, critical system that a lot of people don't appreciate. The people that work it are some of the hardest workers out there. We hired a guy for our county water/sewer maintenance team recently and after watching first hand what the job entailed for 2 hours, he quit. He had realized just how tough and potentially dangerous the job was.
wasn't paid enough to shoulder the workload of 16 millennials, eh?
@@mgntstr The average age of our maintenance department is probably within the millennials range lol. We pay pretty reasonably for our area but there's also DOD contracts and military nearby. This guy was totally green to the world of water and sewer with nearly no experience. I think reading the job description versus actually seeing how tough the job is got us.
Not sure how my old tiny town’s doing now, but they could never keep a water maintenance tech for more than a couple of days. I know many who were hired, & it didn’t matter what they paid, it was dangerous, unpleasant work… two started their own roofing company & another went back to his landscaping job.
One very kind, hardworking, rather slow friend, was more than happy to get the job. But he told me later… after fulfilling his two weeks notice… that he was terrified the entire time, that there was evil & corruption going on there & he didn’t think that he’d make it out alive. After 44 years in that town, he moved out of state, the following month.
@@sunshine3914 it's shameful to see this in governments regardless but to see it in a small town government feels worse somehow.
I like to think we're pretty corruption free, though, I'm also not that naive.
I haven't witness corruption thus far and the one time I heard about textbook corruption happening within the department was when a long time worker was being fired because he had used resources to his own benefit. I'd like to think that means they take it seriously. Especially considering the infringement wasn't that serious. He was doing side jobs for his own company and using tools (including a truck) from the department.
@@mgntstr Boomers gonna boom, eh?
There is a thin veneer of hyper competent professionals that keep the lights on and the water drinkable, replace them with the unworthy and the water turns brown and the lights go out.
As usual, Grady does a superb job. I don’t know how he does it, but thankful he lends his talents to creating richly informative content like this!
EPA should look into casually checking *every state's water* if they really cared about it. Because, it's not just Mississippi lol....
I should hope it wouldn't require a federal agency. Most people use public drinking water. If it's bad, or, heaven help us, dangerous, the voters have the power to make it right -- they literally elect everybody involved in the infrastructure management process.
Heck, there are colleges pretty much everywhere now, too. Presumably they have STEM or hydro engineering curriculum that could easily involve prowling around town testing the water supply.
There's no harm in the EPA bullying governments into getting their stuff together, but we're literally drinking this water! *WE* shouldn't let it get this bad!
You’d be surprised at how little pull the EPA actually has.
I really like your infrastructure videos. It is easy to overlook how important they are until they fail. Unfortunately here in the US we have chosen to under invest in infrastructure for decades.
Here in our small town will will be voting on renovating our waste water treatment facility. It was originally built in the mid 1980s so a lot of the equipment is at end of life and we need to comply with tighter EPA requirement for Phosphorous and heavy metal discharge.
When the folks with the purse strings in government don't believe in government, you get to find out what happens when government fails. Good job Mississippi!