On Wednesday, Sept. 28, Department of Human Services (DHS) Acting Secretary Meg Snead urged Pennsylvanians who may need financial assistance with water bills or wastewater service costs to apply before the federal program ends on Friday, Oct. 28, 2022.

“Any Pennsylvanian having trouble paying drinking water or wastewater bills should apply as soon as possible to see if they qualify for help. Access to clean drinking water and wastewater services that keep our homes safe are important to our daily lives and a family’s ongoing health and wellbeing,” said Snead. “This program is ending on October 28, so anyone who may be able to benefit from this program should apply today. You do not need to know your eligibility in order to apply.”

LIHWAP provides assistance for families who have past-due water bills, had their water service terminated, or received a notice indicating their service will be terminated in the next 60 days. LIHWAP is a temporary assistance program established for the first time in January 2022 through funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.

Households can receive LIHWAP grants for both drinking water service and wastewater service. Grants are issued directly to water service providers, and families must meet income requirements.

Pennsylvanians should have the following information ready to include in their application:

• Names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth for all people in their household
• Proof of income for the applicant and all household members
• A recent water bill

Applications submitted up through Oct. 28 will be accepted and reviewed for eligibility, even if the review goes beyond Oct. 28.

More than 37,000 applications have been approved for LIHWAP since the program’s start on January 4, 2022, totaling more than $31,500,000 in assistance for families whose drinking and wastewater services were in jeopardy, with the average benefit amount being $560.

Applications for LIHWAP, as well as other public assistance programs, can be submitted online at www.compass.state.pa.us. DHS’ County Assistance Offices (CAO) are available for in-person support if clients cannot access online services or need assistance or information that is not on the COMPASS website or the myCOMPASS PA mobile app.

Pennsylvanians can also request a paper application or get help applying for assistance by calling the Customer Service Centers at 215-560-7226 for Philadelphia clients or 1-877-395-8930 for clients in all other counties.

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Originally Appeared Here

May Francis (Fran) Bridges in Jackson, Miss., on Sept. 22.

Emily Kask for NPR

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Emily Kask for NPR

JACKSON, Miss. — Retiree Fran Bridges helps run a bottled water distribution network in west Jackson.

“We’ve been trying to find vulnerable people who don’t have transportation, people who are too frail and elderly to get out to get water,” she says.

For more than two months now she’s been trying to connect donated supplies to people in need. That’s how long Jackson’s most recent boil water notice lasted.

The city didn’t have any running water, even for flushing toilets for a full week last month. Its water treatment system failed when flooding exacerbated longstanding problems. By then nearly 180,000 water customers had already been under a boil advisory for weeks. The state intervened to make emergency repairs and lifted that order on Sept. 15.

Since there have been new problems – a chlorine leak at a treatment plant, and water line breaks. Concerns also remain about potential lead contamination. The health department still urges pregnant women and young children to use bottled or filtered water.

Councilman Vernon Hartley brings water to Christine Webb in Jackson, Miss., on September 22, 2022.

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Councilman Vernon Hartley brings water to Christine Webb in Jackson, Miss., on September 22, 2022.

Emily Kask for NPR

A traumatizing situation

Bridges says people still don’t trust what’s coming from their faucets, and it’s taking a toll.

“Any house we go to in Jackson, you have to realize that people have been traumatized,” Bridges says. “And you just have everybody almost in a daze.”

Bridges is vice president of the Pecan Tree Park neighborhood association and has been helping her city councilman, Vernon Hartley, identify who needs help. A giant map of his district is spread across a table.

“These little markers mean one thing – drop off locations,” he says, pointing to sticky notes posted around the map. “When clean water cannot come out of the tap – we need to get it to them.”

On a sweltering afternoon, he sets out in his car with water loaded in the trunk.

Councilman Vernon Hartley poses fora portrait in his home in Jackson.

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Councilman Vernon Hartley poses fora portrait in his home in Jackson.

Emily Kask for NPR

Residents don’t trust the water

“The citizens have to have a sense of trust that we’re doing the right thing with our water and we’re not there,” Hartley acknowledges.

Hartley says his district is a largely underserved community, and many don’t have the resources to wait in drive-through lines at water distribution sites.

“A lot of these folks have got beat up cars, broken down cars,” he says. “They may have only a little bit of gas and may be trying to save that gas to go to work.”

He sees Christine Webb, 82, sitting on her front porch doing needlework, and pulls into her driveway with a case of water. She’s thankful.

“It’s pretty rough on me but I’m making it,” she tells him.

Councilman Vernon Hartley brings water to Christine Webb in Jackson.

Emily Kask for NPR

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Webb says she sometimes forgets and uses the tap water to cook with, but is trying to get accustomed to using bottled water.

You cannot function right without your water.

Kimberly Owens

The prolonged water crisis has changed the way most households operate. Take for instance Kimberly Owens, who lives in the Pecan Tree Park neighborhood.

“Our family is a family of five. I have two sons and a daughter,” she says.

The boys are teenagers and her daughter is a college student. Her husband works at a local grocery store and they also help care for her mother, recently released from the hospital after a surgery. Owens says the water problems are a major disruption.

“You cannot function right without your water,” she says.

Owens says she’s never quite sure what might happen when she turns on the kitchen faucet. She has enough flow now for flushing, but for a while she had set up a portable camp toilet for her family. Even though officials lifted a boil order a couple weeks ago, she’s not convinced the water is okay.

Kim Owens poses for a portrait on her front porch in Jackson, Miss.

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Kim Owens poses for a portrait on her front porch in Jackson, Miss.

Emily Kask for NPR

“I’m still a little iffy about water,” Owens says. “I will not be cooking and drinking with this water because I don’t feel like it’s safe enough.”

So it’s bottled water for drinking, brushing teeth, washing faces, and in the kitchen. That generates a lot of waste – a big trash can is chock full of used plastic bottles. For doing dishes, she uses bleach.

Owens says she can’t afford the natural gas bill to use her stove to boil water for five baths a day, so showers are quick.

“If we’re not supposed to drink it, why should we be washing anything in it? Clothes, us, anything? How can we shower if the water is unsafe to drink?” she asks.

Owens says the family has been picking up free water at distribution points daily, but is also spending about $50 a week to buy additional supplies.

That’s on top of her water bill, which she says was $469.

“So we have been paying for water that is unsafe, and that is so unfair.”

“To imagine it that this is happening in a capital city in America, it’s just unimaginable,” says Jackson councilman Vernon Hartley. “Somehow we need to figure this thing out.”

Councilman Vernon Hartley shows a map of water delivery sites in Jackson’s Fifth Ward in Jackson, Miss.

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Councilman Vernon Hartley shows a map of water delivery sites in Jackson’s Fifth Ward in Jackson, Miss.

Emily Kask for NPR

Federal government threatens legal action

He says mismanagement of Jackson’s water treatment system is the responsibility of local elected officials, but he also blames a lack of state investment in Jackson’s infrastructure. He thinks a regional solution will be necessary but that’s an idea Jackson’s mayor has rejected. Hartley welcomes federal invention.

EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice are in talks with the city to avoid litigation and devise a court-approved plan to ensure sustainable water service.

These conditions I believe we can all agree are unacceptable in these United States of America.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan

EPA Administrator Michael Regan says the people of Jackson have been without access to safe and reliable water for decades – a situation he calls a “longstanding injustice.”

“These conditions I believe we can all agree are unacceptable in these United States of America,” Regan says.

In a letter, the U.S. Justice Department said state and local authorities have violated the Safe Drinking Water Act. It cites 300 boil water notices in the last two years and says there’s substantial endangerment to human health.

There are also civil lawsuits brought by water customers and a Civil Rights Act claim from NAACP against the state of Mississippi alleging racial discrimination.

May Francis (Fran) Bridges in Jackson, Miss.

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Chronic disinvestment in Jackson’s infrastructure

For community activist Fran Bridges, fixing the water system won’t solve the root of the problem which she thinks is a mindset that the majority Black city of Jackson doesn’t deserve better.

“People hold on to the old days where Black people were seen as a commodity and so they can’t let go of the myth that ‘white is right, you Black, you get back,'” she says. “So they think they’re the ones who should make the decisions and they should benefit from the poor.”

Bridges says when state leaders block investment in the capital city, steer spending to majority white suburbs, and use federal welfare dollars to benefit football celebrities, it deprives resources from the places they’re needed most.

“You can look at me all you want to about how I managed my house. But when you were deliberately taking bricks out, when I’m trying to build up, then something is wrong,” Bridges says.

She says the powers that be need to understand people should have equitable resources because, she says, “We are all God’s children.”

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Originally Appeared Here

In a bid to help keep houseplants healthy, an expert has shared why tap water should not be used when watering peace lilies. Known for their green, glossy leaves, they are one of the most popular houseplants in the UK, despite being quite fussy. According to research by Hammonds Furniture, there are more than 8,000 people a month Googling how to care for a peace lily.

Patch’s Plant Doctor, Richard Cheshire, told Express.co.uk: “Although these plants are fairly resilient, hard water is a common cause of white residue on lush plants like these.

“I recommend collecting rainwater or using distilled water on your plant.

“Essentially, hard water contains magnesium and calcium and these excess minerals can be harmful to them, or at least leave behind a white residue on the leaves as the plant breathes.”

Houseplant owners could also boil water and leave it to cool or let tap water “dissipate” harsh minerals for at least 24 hours in a watering can.

READ MORE: Worst place to sell a property in the UK named – list

This can also help the plant to thrive and conduct photosynthesis more efficiently.

Peace lilies should also may need to be repotted every few years, depending on how fast it is growing.

They will need a slightly larger pot, but actually grow well when their roots are slightly restricted.

Signs your peace lily needs a new pot including recurrent wilting despite regular watering.

Patch has launched a Plant Paramedic Service for the month of September.

Founder and CEO of Patch Plants, Freddie Blackett, said: “Many plant owners see the telltale signs of a dying leaf and immediately reach for the bin, but it’s actually often possible to revive your plants by following some simple steps – that’s why we’ve created the Patch Plant Paramedics service to salvage your houseplants when you return from your holiday, rather than replacing them.”

The Plant Paramedics campaign will be running until the end of September, initially launching in London before rolling out to other cities. To add your foliage to the trans-plant list and book a visit from the Patch Plant Paramedics, go to https://www.patchplants.com/gb/en/plant-paramedics/.

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Baltimore city officials this week said problems due to aging infrastructure in the city’s water treatment system contributed to an E. coli contamination in September that left some city residents without drinking water for five days.

An unprecedented confluence of events in multiple areas of the city’s water system — which includes about 4,000 miles of pipe — reduced chlorine levels enough to trigger three positive tests for E. coli, Timothy Wolfe, chief of the office of engineering and construction for the city’s Department of Public Works, said in an interview Friday.

City officials shared the findings for the first time publicly Thursday at the second of two city council hearings devoted to the contamination, which prompted a five-day boil water advisory in September for West Baltimore and parts of Baltimore County, sending volunteers and city workers scrambling to meet residents’ basic needs in the summerlike heat.

The presence of E. coli bacteria indicated the water may have been contaminated by human or animal feces, officials said at the time. No illnesses were linked to the contaminated water, city spokeswoman Monica Lewis said Friday.

Residents and environmental justice advocates have for years decried inaction on infrastructural improvements needed to safeguard Baltimore’s water quality. They say funding inequities leave cash-strapped cities with no choice but to react to problems they would rather prevent.

Baltimore City Council member John T. Bullock, who represents parts of West Baltimore affected by the advisory, welcomed the results of the probe, which officials have been awaiting for weeks.

“We could always have more detailed information but the meeting was helpful in terms of what was happening with the reservoirs and treatment centers and where there may have been breakdowns in the infrastructure,” he said.

Bullock said he was confident Wes Moore, the Democrat running for governor, will prioritize West Baltimore, if elected. But federal infrastructure funding will also be necessary to make lasting upgrades in the city’s water treatment and collection system, Bullock said.

“Hopefully some of that money will make it’s way to Baltimore, because we are one of the oldest cities in the country,” he said.

The emergency overlapped with a crisis in Jackson, Miss., where 150,000 residents were without safe drinking water, partly due to a failing water treatment plant, focusing new attention on weaknesses in water infrastructure around the country.

The problems with Baltimore’s water system were exacerbated this summer after workers had to make valve repairs on a downtown Baltimore water main up to 60 inches in diameter, which was installed in 1915, Wolfe said. Around the same time, over July 4 weekend, a sinkhole opened when storm water overwhelmed a 115-year-old stone arch drain, forcing workers to shut down a 48-inch water main built in 1898.

In early February, another 48-inch water main, which was installed in 1925, needed repairs that could have compromised an earthen dam holding up a large water reservoir critical to providing residents drinking water, he said. Rather than risk worker safety and the integrity of a critical water supply, the pipeline was shut off. A $137 million project to replace the pipe system with underground storage tanks should be complete in early 2023, Wolfe said.

Adjustments needed to maintain water levels and safety in another reservoir upset the pressure balance in the entire system, allowing chlorine residuals — the city’s defense against bacteria — to change, he said.

Officials are accelerating a program to replace the city’s water mains, or, underground pipes, at the rate of 15 miles a year, but Wolfe said federal dollars could allow them to do more.

“More money to the city — or any city of this size — is very helpful,” he said.

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Originally Appeared Here

The adage that “crime is socially constructed” is often dismissed as college-dorm-room puffery, a statement that sounds provocative but is naively detached from “the reality” of crime and its impact on communities and the politicians who ostensibly serve them. The media, for its part, has a significant role to play here regarding both the social construction of crime and the manufacturing of consent around the notion that crime is not socially constructed. One recent example of how little our large media institutions covered a major story of mass violence—much less demanded “action” in response to it— is a useful object lesson in how this double standard works. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that lead levels in school drinking fountains should not exceed the threshold of 1 part per billion. “By this measure,” The Guardian reports, “71% of Chicago tests reviewed by the Guardian would not pass.”

One week ago, The Guardian published a blockbuster report, complete with new scientific analysis, showing just how widespread lead contamination is in the water system of the third-largest city in the US: Chicago. Building on years’ worth of reporting by Michael Hawthorne and Cecilia Reyes of The Chicago Tribune, Erin McCormick, Aliya Uteuova, and Taylor Moore of The Guardian carried out a new, independent analysis of Chicago’s drinking water and found that “One in 20 tap water tests performed for thousands of Chicago residents found lead, a neurotoxic metal, at or above US government limits… And one-third had more lead than is permitted in bottled water.” This means, according to the journalists, that “out of the 24,000 tests, approximately 1,000 homes had lead exceeding federal standards.” The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that lead levels in school drinking fountains should not exceed the threshold of 1 part per billion. “By this measure,” The Guardian reports, “71% of Chicago tests reviewed by the Guardian would not pass.” 

The findings also confirm what community activists have been arguing for years: Lead toxins are far more common in poor communities and are disproportionately harming Black and Brown children. As the authors of The Guardian report note:

… nine of the top 10 zip codes with the largest percentages of high test results were neighborhoods with majorities of Black and Hispanic residents, and there were dozens of homes with shockingly high lead levels. One home, in the majority-Black neighborhood of South Chicago, had lead levels of 1,100 parts per billion (ppb) – 73 times the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit of 15ppb.

The stakes here couldn’t be higher. The negative effects of lead in water are manifest and well documented: At the levels uncovered in The Guardian report, lead in water can cause “premature birth, reduced birth weight, seizures, hearing loss, behavioral problems, brain damage, learning disabilities, and a lower IQ level in children.”

So was this report met with widespread outrage about the criminal assault on millions of Chicagoans? No. The report got one follow-up story on NPR and a couple local outlets but received no mention in any mainstream news: CNN, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News—none of these outlets mentioned the new report about Chicago’s clean water crisis. They ignored the story altogether. 

It’s not just Chicago, and it’s not just Flint. Lead contamination is a widespread problem in dozens of cities that has been linked to increased disease, brain damage, and harmful mental effects. In other words: It’s a form of mass, routine violence leveled against the poor.

Chicago officials and Illinois state officials, to say nothing of the federal government, have known about this issue for years and have done next to nothing to fix the problem. As The Guardian reports, at the current rate the city is replacing the pipes that are poisoning its residents, Chicago is on pace to finish the task in over 1,000 years. As Heather Cherone of WTTW mentioned earlier this year, after a splashy promise by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to replace the 400,000 lead pipes two years ago, as of April 2022, only 74 have been replaced, or 0.0185%. (That number hasn’t improved much since the spring. As The Guardian report notes, “as of this month [September], only 180 of the city’s almost half-million lead lines have been replaced.”)

It’s not just Chicago, and it’s not just Flint. Lead contamination is a widespread problem in dozens of cities that has been linked to increased disease, brain damage, and harmful mental effects. In other words: It’s a form of mass, routine violence leveled against the poor. According to one 2019 study by The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, the United States sees an estimated 196,930 premature pollution-related deaths annually, including 28,260 from lead-related poisoning. One 2018 Lancet study found that lead exposure may be linked to 412,000 premature US deaths yearly, 10 times greater than previous estimates. Can one honestly say they’ve seen a single story on this horrific fact in any of our local or nightly news broadcasts? 

Compare this mode of violence and the media’s coverage of it (or lack thereof) to the breathless coverage a single shoplifting incident in San Francisco received last summer—an incident that was written about in over 300 separate articles in the month the video went viral. The theft of less than $1,000 worth of goods was mentioned on CNN (multiple times!), The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, and dozens of other mainstream outlets. A few hundred dollars’ worth of goods being stolen from Walgreens—and the broader Media Concern about a shoplifting “crime wave” since 2021—has captured the public imagination for months on end, and is currently playing a significant role for more than a few candidates running for political office. We get thousands of related “news” stories, committee hearings, roundtables, and frequent congressional mentions of the issue. 

Chicago officials and Illinois state officials, to say nothing of the federal government, have known about this issue for years and have done next to nothing to fix the problem. As The Guardian reports, at the current rate the city is replacing the pipes that are poisoning its residents, Chicago is on pace to finish the task in over 1,000 years.

On the other side, however, as mentioned above, there’s only been a handful of scattered reports on the poisoning of millions of Chicagoans, even though the problem has been well known to community activists, environmental activists, and residents for years. While similar instances of mass poisoning and/or governmental abandonment of people in Flint, Michigan, or Jackson, Mississippi, managed to capture national headlines—albeit briefly, and only as a result of relentless online and offline social activism and the circulation of gut-wrenching images of bottles of water needing to be shipped in for years on end—those instances are the exception. Moreover, these crimes against poor and predominantly non-white populations tend to get framed merely as an unfortunate byproduct of living in poverty—an accepted injustice with no author and no party from whom to demand accountability. In the sanctioned arena of public discourse, it would seem, the mass lead poisoning of Chicago’s poor is simply seen as a Law of Nature we cannot do anything about. And then, eventually, media focus on this violence fades from our TVs, newspapers, and websites. 

This is how crime is socially constructed. Despite the fact that most wealthy neighborhoods managed to swap out their lead pipes decades ago, poor neighborhoods are deliberately underserved and neglected, and the incalculable injury and death that invariably results is simply factored into the cost of maintaining the status quo. The brain damage, kidney problems, and death leveled at poor Americans who play Russian roulette every time they open their faucet is not given priority, nor is it treated as a horrible crime our leaders need to urgently address or plan for. Such a state of affairs means that Chicago Mayor Lightfoot could just ignore media inquiries about the new report’s findings and quickly pivot to hosting business forums—and the world keeps turning. Everyone forgets and moves on. Because our media––and thus, the public—don’t have the tools to understand that preventable mass injury, death, and environmental harm is not a Fact of Life, something we cannot do anything about. It is a political choice, and it’s one our leaders make every day because those it’s slowly killing have little to no political voice.  

Imagine, if you will, that the Chicago City Council passed a law stipulating there could be no new casinos or sportsbooks in Chicago until all the lead pipes were replaced. It would get done in 18 months. The massive developer and gambling lobbies would personally start digging the holes. There is, as of now, no lobby for the poor, no political incentive to frame lead poisoning as a crime, and no media grammar to frame it in this way. So there’s just nightly stories on purse snatchings and shootings—which are, of course, news—but, in and of themselves, provide a wildly incomplete portrait of how violence is visited upon people.

Related stories

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Originally Appeared Here

Published: Published Date – 12:08 AM, Sat – 1 October 22

(Representational image) Without maintenance, the water purifier will not function properly and there are chances you may end up drinking contaminated water.

Hyderabad: Over the last few years, water purifiers have become a part of almost every household. Given a host of factors, despite the water supplies from the water boards, families have started to shift to water purifiers completely for their drinking water needs.

In a purifier, the contaminated water passes through a thin polymer membrane with very small pores which weeds out minerals and impurities and flushes out those.

To ensure that you get clean and safe water every single day, you need to properly maintain the water purifier. Without maintenance, the water purifier will not function properly and there are chances you may end up drinking contaminated water.

Let’s discuss a few tips that will help you maintain the water purifier. Here are the 5 tips to maintain the good health of your purifier.

Maintaining the membrane

The membrane present in a water purifier system is responsible for overall health and maintenance of safe drinking water. This membrane needs to be changed every 3-4 months in order to prevent it from clogging pores.

Filter changes periodically

The filter of a purifier needs renewal after every 3-4 months. The reason behind this is the contaminants from water can clog the filters after a short span of time.

Not cleaning the water purifier regularly can affect its filtration capacity which can ultimately affect quality of the water. If you use them without changing, the impurities can be transferred to the water you drink. Water purifiers have 12 stages of purification, it is important to schedule the filter change on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on two other types of filters, sediment and carbon filters. Sediment filters collect the sediments over a period of time and need to be changed once a year. Carbon filters remove chlorine and other dangerous contaminants that affect the performance of the RO membrane. The filter is responsible for the taste and odour of the water you drink.

Keep a check on leakages

There might be chances of leakage when the purifier becomes too old and in that case, if you notice drips or leakages, get it fixed as soon as possible. Leakages in a water purifier can create a lot of fuss if you don’t take the right measures.

Sanitisation

In order to maintain the cleanliness, you have to periodically keep a check to clean the pipes of your purifier. This ensures the availability of clean water every time and it also increases the life of your purifier. The RO tank is the reason behind perfectly working purifiers.

Yearly maintenance

To avoid any serious issues with the purifier, make sure to get help from any professional. Renowned brands provide annual maintenance contracts (AMC) which is a professional way to resolve the issue of your purifier.

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Do You Need to Filter Your Tap Water? FAQ – Woman’s World

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Originally Appeared Here

Landslide disrupts water supply project in Surkhet

Image for Representation.

SURKHET: Birendranagar of Surkhet has been facing acute shortage of drinking water.

Surkhet Valley Drinking Water Consumers’ Organization has now been supplying drinking water in taps at consumers’ homes on alternate day.

The capital of Karnali Province reels under shortage of drinking water after landslide sweeps away the main line of drinking water every year. Landslide has become an additional challenge for drinking water supply in the city which also is under drinking water crisis even in other seasons too.

Chairperson of the Organisation, Kulamani Devkota, said problem has surfaced in drinking water supply after landslide damaged other structures of drinking water supply along with the main pipeline each year.

The landslide caused huge damage to the main pipeline this year too, he shared.

“We have been facing problem in supply of drinking water in Birendranagar since few days after the landslide damaged the main supply line brought from Jhupra stream,” added Devkota.

The landslide occurred on September 18 had swept away 16 meters pipeline at Birendranagar-13.

It had damaged 300mm DI pipe and other structures at that site. Efforts were underway to bring water by installing HDPE pipe at that place. Since the main pipe was swept away by the landslide, the Sansthan has made arrangement to supply water to Surkhet Valley from Khursanibari Stream.

“The main transmission line is currently under maintenance. We have made alternative arrangement in absence of main pipe. We have installed a pipe at Khursanibari Stream to supply water to Surkhet Valley for some days. We have been receiving 50 litres water per second from the Stream,” he said.

The repair cost of the pipeline that has been supplying 86 litres water per second is estimated Rs 500,000, according to Chairperson Devkota. The construction of structures in place of those swept away in landslide would take Rs 500,000 to Rs 700,000 every year.

The pipeline for the drinking water is laid in a sloppy area. Engineer Balaram Tiwari shared that infrastructures in the drinking water project had been damaged yearly due to sloppy structure of the land. It would take few years to supply water from the new pipeline, he said.

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JACKSON, Miss. — The mayor of Mississippi’s capital was 5 years old when his parents moved their family from New York to Jackson in 1988 so that his father, who had been involved in a Black nationalist movement in the 1970s, could return to the unfinished business of challenging inequity and fighting racial injustice.

“Instead of shielding their most precious resource, their children, from the movement or movement work, they felt that they would give us to it,” said Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, now 39.

Lumumba describes himself as a “radical” who is “uncomfortable with oppressive conditions.” A Democrat in his second term as mayor, he faces a high-pressure leadership test as Jackson struggles to consistently produce a basic necessity of life — safe, clean drinking water.

The city has had water problems for decades. Most of Jackson was recently without running water for several days after heavy rains exacerbated problems at a water treatment plant. For a month before that happened, the city was under a boil-water notice because state health officials found cloudy water that could cause illness. Thousands of people lost running water during a cold snap in 2021.

Jackson’s population and tax base eroded as mostly white middle-class residents started moving to the suburbs about a decade after public schools integrated in 1970. More than 80% of Jackson’s 150,000 residents are Black. The city’s poverty rate of 25% is almost double the national rate.

“I see a community that has often been left out of the equation, that has been treated disproportionately in terms of equity of resources,” Lumumba told The Associated Press. “And so I believe that it is imperative that someone stand up for them and someone speak to those issues.”

Emergency repairs are being done at Jackson’s two water treatment plants. Water pressure has been restored. And although Republican Gov. Tate Reeves announced Sept. 15 that people can once again drink water from the tap after seven weeks of the boil order, the state health department says pregnant women or young children should take precautions because of lead levels previously found in some homes on the Jackson water system.

Lumumba’s supporters say the mayor cares deeply for Jackson but faces opposition from Republican state leaders, and he inherited extensive problems from previous city administrations, including an unreliable billing system that has undercut revenue for repairs and maintenance.

Critics, though, say Lumumba has failed to provide clear leadership — allowing dangerous levels of understaffing at the treatment plants, obscuring concerns raised by the Environmental Protection Agency and not providing detailed budget proposals for fixing the water system.

Othor Cain, a Jackson radio host, is among the critics. Cain taught Lumumba in Sunday school at a Methodist church when Lumumba was young. He described the mayor as “a nice guy” and a talented orator. But he said Lumumba has not surrounded himself with strong managers and has faltered in building work relationships with other elected officials.

“You can’t blame him for the age-old water system and the age-old infrastructure,” Cain said. “But you can blame him from 2017, when he was elected, for doing nothing.”

Robert Luckett, a civil rights historian, was appointed by Lumumba to serve on the Jackson school board. Luckett said he respects the mayor and believes he’s doing a good job. Like many friends and acquaintances, Luckett calls Lumumba by his middle name.

“When Antar first ran for mayor and lost, and then ran and won, there was an idealism to his campaign that was the hallmark of early-career politicians,” Luckett said. “In his first term as mayor, the shine on that idealism was kind of taken off a little bit.”

Republicans control the Mississippi Legislature and all statewide offices. Lumumba and most other Jackson officials are Democrats. The mayor and Gov. Reeves rarely talked before Jackson’s latest water crisis, and they’ve only made a few appearances together since it started.

The day after announcing the end of the boil-water notice in Jackson, the governor spoke at the opening of a business in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

“I’ve got to tell you, it is a great day to be in Hattiesburg. It’s also, as always, a great day to not be in Jackson,” Reeves said. “I feel I should take off my emergency management director hat and leave it in the car, and take off my public works director hat and leave it in the car.”

Lumumba is an attorney and has been a community organizer. He said he’s able to work with people who have different vantage points.

“If you can only organize people who think like you, you’re not much of an organizer,” he said.

Lumumba is the second person in his family to be mayor of Jackson. The man he calls his hero, his father Chokwe Lumumba, was elected mayor in 2013 after serving four years on the city council. Chokwe Lumumba persuaded Jackson voters to approve a 1% local sales tax to fund infrastructure improvements. He died in 2014, after less than nine months in office.

The elder Lumumba, a Michigan native, had lived in Mississippi in the 1970s and was active in a Black nationalist organization, the Republic of New Afrika. After he practiced law in the North for several years, he and his wife, Nubia, moved their family back to Mississippi.

The younger Lumumba said he spent part of his childhood working at Jackson’s Malcolm X Grassroots Center for Self-Determination and Self-Defense. He said the center had summer programs for young people, offering them political lessons and leisure activities such as swimming.

“I’m grateful to my parents for giving me that value system in my work today,” Lumumba said.

After his father died, the younger Lumumba ran unsuccessfully in a special mayoral election in 2014.

He won his first term as mayor in 2017 and easily won a second term in 2021. Lumumba said as he was growing up and earning a law degree, he did not aspire to become mayor but prayed God would use him to do big work.

“I believe that the Lord keeps our prayers stored up in vials and they’re like a sweet-smelling aroma to him,” said Lumumba, who attends a nondenominational Christian church. “So, the prayer that I made at like around 8 years old, He remembered and I think that is why I’m in position here.”

Corey Lewis of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he and Lumumba are best friends. They met in 2001 when Lewis was a student at Tougaloo College and Lumumba was graduating from Jackson’s Callaway High School.

“He cares about the city of Jackson — like, that is a passion,” Lewis said. “We could be out having fun or going on a trip and he’d be like, ‘Man, I just don’t know what I’m going to do about this situation.'”

Cain, though, said he thinks leading a city is a larger job than the current Mayor Lumumba anticipated.

“I just believe there is a difference between a politician or an elected official than an advocate or an activist,” the radio host said. “I don’t think this guy has been able to make the transition.”

In a 2017 speech at Millsaps College in Jackson, Lumumba said that as a child of two activists, he tends to talk about big issues like social justice and self-determination.

“But as I quickly learned on the campaign trail,” he said, “when you knock on a gentleman or a lady’s door and you talk about these great big ideas, you’re confronted with a brother or sister who says, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s good, young brother, but how are you going to fix that pothole in the middle of my street?’”

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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.

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THE RESULTS of a scientific survey of Windermere involving one hundred volunteers are in. 

The project, led by Dr Ben Surridge, a biogeochemist and senior lecturer at Lancaster University gives a large-scale snapshot of the water quality in Windermere that has never been seen before. 

A map of the sites surveyed around Windermere

The water samples were taken in June by one hundred citizen scientists across 93 different sites. and 59 across the shoreline of Windermere istelf. Typically the Environment Agency surveys four locations across Windermere. Dr Surridge said that ‘it would not have been possible to get all these locations’ if it was not for the number of people that volunteered, giving an ‘unprecedented’ snapshot of the water.

The Big Windermere Survey aimed to establish two factors, how much bacteria is in the water and how much phosphorus is in the water. Phosphorus can come from sewage and it is a nutrient that can help feed the blue-green algal blooms we have seen in Windermere over the summer.

The samples were put into test kits and sent off to the lab at Lancaster University  

For levels of bacteria such as e.coli and intestinal enterococci, which can come from faecal matter, 90 per cent of the sites in the survey met bacterial standards for ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ bathing water quality under the European Union Bathing Water Directive, which is a key test of whether a body of water is safe for a human to interact with. 

READ MORE: Windermere to feature in Channel 5 Michaela Strachan documentary

More mixed results came from the phosphorus survey. 63 per cent of all sites met standards for at least ‘good’ status. For Windermere itself, the figure was 58 per cent. 

The Doctor said that he swims in Windermere and has both a professional and personal interest in it

The main conclusion that Dr Surridge established is that Windermere is not a single waterbody with the same water quality. There is no evidence of poor water quality across the whole of Windermere. 

However, the survey will have to be run again in November and at some point in the spring to get a true analysis of Windermere. Dr Surridge said that people were already willing to volunteer again. 

According to the survey, Windermere should not be treated as a singular body of water

He said that the raised profile of Windermere through the media coverage and Matt Staniek’s campaign ‘is really important’: “The value is there in speaking about these issues. We are hoping to inform this discussion with scientific evidence, so we can put our energy and investment into the right places.” 

 

 

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Originally Appeared Here