your comments there or send a tweet with the handle @cspanwj. "washington post" wording this week that the experts say the crisis was years in the making.

a result of inadequate running central structure of raid between the leaders of this majority black and democratic led city and the white republicans who run the state. the head of the department of planning and development in jackson said that the seeds of the water crisis were planted in the 19 fix these when white residents left the city in droves after federal courts mandated integration of city schools. as the city shrank, there was less money to fund schools and other resources. middle-class families left as a result, leaving jackson without the tax revenue is needed to upgrade its system. state investment would have helped to close the gap state officials repeatedly declined to fund it, leaving the city to fund for itself. governor tate reeves did not respond to an interviewer last but said in a news conference on monday night that he appeared to

suggest that the mayor of the city had cap state officials in the dark about the status of the water treatment plant. want to show you what the governor had to say earlier this week. here he is in mississippi. >> at the end of last week i was briefed by the state health department on the discoveries that jackson's main water treatment facility has been operating with zero redundancies. the main pumps had recently been damaged severely. about the same time as the prolonged boil water notice began and the facility is now operating on smaller backup pumps. the city government was not able to give them a timeline for when the facility would be back in proper operating condition. a far too small number of heroic front-line workers were trying their hardest to hold the system together, but it was a near impossibility.

we were told on friday that there was no way to predict exactly when, but it was a near certainty that jackson would fail to use running water sometime in the next several weeks or months if something did not tear really and roof. we began preparing for a scenario where jackson would be without running water for an extended amount of time. over the weekend we started developing water distribution lands, sourcing tankers and assessing all the risks associated with an event like this. we also set a meeting for today between the mayor and our experts. all of this was with the prayer that we would have more time before their system ran for failure. unfortunately, that failure appears to have begun today. host: the republican governor of mississippi earlier this week.

here's the mayor of jackson. here he is from tuesday in a news conference that he held. >> it is because of our transparency that the state is aware of the many challenges our system faces. because of our transparency that we know about the staffing shortages. it is because of our transparency that they know about the system issues and it is because of our transparency that they know about the numerous equipment failures that we have. this is a set of accumulated problems based on deferred maintenance that has not taken place over decades. so, let's talk about what you do next. let's look forward to the united front we have now announced and look forward to. we are grateful to add the state to our team for the betterment of our city, jackson, and our water system. host: the mayor of jackson,

mississippi earlier this week. we are asking all of you this morning to tell us if you are concerned about the drinking water in your community and why. we will get to those calls. joining us this morning by zoom is mark edwards, a professor of water resource engineering at virginia tech university. thank you for being with us this morning. experts in newspaper reporting are quoted as saying that there could be jackson's happening all over the country. do you believe that's true? guest: without a doubt. many cities have revenue shortfalls, that are shrinking in population and struggling to meet pa regulations. what happened in jackson is exactly what i noted when the flint disaster occurred back in 2015, 2016. the only thing unusual about flint is that it got national

attention and outside assistance to fix its problems. guest: what does the infrastructure of jackson look like and how is it similar roster country? guest: jackson is in many ways a twin of flint michigan. they have had a source water change instructor 14 and never implemented corrosion control. they have been above the lead action level since 2015. two months before flint was discovered to have high lead in its system. unlike flint, which was taken over, essentially, by ima because of the imminent and substantial endangerment and billions of dollars that flowed into fix the system, jackson has just been allowed to continue without following federal law. the national enforcement investigation center in february

of 2020 detailed all of these problems. epa put out an emergency order march of 2020 that says the residents of jackson were in imminent and substantial endangerment. you are left wondering why they didn't exert emergency powers in the system. they don't have trained personnel or the equipment. nor are they following federal law and they have been breaking it decades. host: the residents in the city of jackson were told to boil their water even be where this happened. guest: that's right. i mean they had a source water change. the water is difficult to treat. they are not following basic protocols necessary to remove the particulate matter. it's all detailed painstakingly in april or with 2000 pages of appendices in february of 2020 by the epa national force

investigation center. host: the report this morning is that it could be up to $1 billion to fix the infrastructure in jackson, mississippi. does that sound about right to you? guest: that's the estimate to fix the sewage, not even the problem we are talking about today. it will take hundreds of millions to get them through the next couple of months, in order to get them back on track. host: you are credited with uncovering the water contamination in flint back in 2014. what has changed since that city got this national attention? guest: well, flint because of the malfeasance of the state and federal government in terms of causing that problem, they had access to outside hunting. since the declared federal emergency in early 26 team, literally billions of dollars

have flowed into flint. fema helped get the system working again. you know, the city could not have done that on their own. the difference here is that jackson has been left on their own and i think partly because of what happened in lent, no one wants to exert emergency powers and or take over the system to protect the health of the residence because as it stands, the city has just been violating federal law for decades. host: what does the nation's water system look like? can you explain it? why are we having situations like flint and jackson and potentially more? guest: on the whole the country is doing ok. if you are living in a bigger city with stable population revenue, people can plan. but you have a subset of the country in poorer white and

black communities where a lot of the population has left the town and the tax base has declined. that puts them in really dire straits. they just cannot afford to make the pipe upgrades and treatment raids necessary to keep the system running. so there is a subset of the country that is in these shrinking cities with declining tax bases who cannot afford. the paradigm is you get the water you can afford. short of a disaster like water crisis that brings in outside money, you just have to do the best you can, even if you don't have the funding to meet federal law. host: "white house retrofits infrastructure build to better help communities, to help the plumbing for. that's how they put it in this article and it seems that the

white house is trying to bypass loans given to state governments and instead give grants right directly to these cities. do you think that would help? guest: i think that's part of the solution but presently in jackson they just don't have anyone trained to know how to treat the water. nor do they have enough of them. so this is really a situation where i think pa and/or someone should have been granted emergency powers. at least back in 2020, 2021. i'm glad they are finally doing it. now there is an emergency being declared with outside resources and trained people who can come into to try to get this water treated to not only be delivered for quality, which was the problem in flint, but they don't even have quantity of water. they don't even have enough capacity to get water coming out of the tap. host: mark edwards, what are you

watching for as this crisis unfolds? the lead paragraph of the story is that this could be indefinite. guest: oh yeah, no, this is a major, major problem. like lent, someone will have to come in there and you will need a fema like situation to oversee the system months and months and months. the failure here is just the tip of the text -- iceberg. the lead problem is still ongoing. epa had a mission just last month where they are still not implementing corrosion control. the water in their system is so aggressive, leaching lead, destroying what's left of their pipe system. host: the story that we show you and the viewers from "the new york times," it was because the president had read recently a different story from "the new york times" finding that there were minority communities in the south where there was literally

sewage in their backyard. sewage backing up into their bathtubs. guest: well, that's right. as i said in jackson, the biggest problem financially is there sewage system. we are not even talking about that here. basically the water has just stopped quant -- stopped coming out of their taps in the quantity that they need. they cannot even get quality. but now the water is stopping and there is not enough water coming out of their taps to even flush toilets and the bigger problem in the midst of all of that is sewage. host: mark edwards, thank you very much for your time this morning. the

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