In 1960, Bertha Anderson toted water from a rural Yazoo County well.
In 2021, she filled buckets in a Jackson ditch.
At least back then, she says, she could drink it.
Anderson, 84, lives in a clean home on DeWitt Avenue, a tight-knit if sleepy neighborhood just south of Galloway Elementary School which has, like most of Jackson, lacked reliable access to water for years, long before the current water crisis. As Anderson said, “it ain’t nothing new.” Many of the street’s residents, all or almost all of whom are Black and roughly three-quarters of whom are senior citizens, feel frustrated, exhausted and overlooked by city and state leaders.
Most of her neighbors have struggled with inconsistent or no water pressure since the latest crisis began.
“You done failed your people,” said DeWitt Avenue’s Larry Kelly, 64, referring to the city’s leaders. “You say you love Mississippi, you love your state. But I don’t believe that.”
Empty faucets, empty words
The street itself, cracked and tan-brown, has several scars of fresher asphalt covering water pipes that city crews repaired weeks after they burst. The newest patch, in front of Arlishea Dyson’s house, covers the site of a leak that completely diverted water away from at least eight homes on the street for almost a month.
Anderson remembers when she first saw the leak. She stepped out of her red door one February morning in 2021 and noticed water bubbling in the street in front of Dyson’s house. She said she called the City of Jackson that same day and an employee said to her what many residents of DeWitt Avenue have realized are empty words: “We’ll send someone down there.”
From the front porch where she spends most of her time, Anderson watched the stream of water shoot higher while no one came to repair it. After three days, the hole in the pipe was large enough to leave Anderson’s, Dyson’s and others’ homes downstream of the burst without water.
So Anderson and her family filled the bucket under her porch in the runoff that was flooding the street with enough water to flush the toilet and carried it home, like she did half a century before. Dyson, 43, did the same thing, as did Ruth Cottrell, 73. Drinking and cooking with the water was out of the question, although some haven’t drunk it in years, anyway. (Kelly hasn’t drunk the city’s water since 2020. Anderson hasn’t drank it in 20 years. It tastes “like a cesspool,” she said.)
During the 2021 crisis, Andersonand her family bathed using water jugs or walked down the street to a relative’s house to shower. Others boiled the runoff water and used it to clean themselves. When Dyson’s son was boiling the street water to bathe, he accidentally spilled it on himself and suffered second-degree burns, Dyson said.
They were without water for about about three weeks, Anderson and Dyson remembered, during which time Anderson called the city at least two more times, and Dyson also called. When someone finally came to fix it, Anderson remembers what they said: “Damn this water.”
At the other end of the street, Kelly said a pipe burst near the intersection of Pleasant Street four years ago. He said his water pressure was mostly unaffected, but the water was discolored, and he believed ground water had seeped into his water line. It was giving his son stomach cramps.
He was frustrated. He was worried for his son and his wife, who has diabetes. They stopped drinking the water, and he asked for someone with the city to fix it. He said workers came out and looked at it without fixing it several times.
“Who are you going to send to fix it?” he asked.
When city crews do come to fix water issues on DeWitt or in the surrounding area, several residents complained that they aren’t given notice before their water is shut off for hours at a time.
‘Everything was lovely’
Ray Charles McClinton moved to DeWitt Avenue in 1973, when he was 13 years old. He remembers how different it used to be.
“Everything was lovely. People would go over here,” he said, pointing in front of his house. “Children were running up and down the streets.”
The overgrown lots across from his house used to hold nice homes. He’d play flag football in the yard there. It seemed like the city cared about them back then. Police would patrol the area on foot. City workers would help clear limbs from trees. More generally, if you had an issue, you felt like someone would show up.
Forgotten
The area started to decline around 2000, McClinton said. A few years after that is when Kelly, who has lived on the street for 25 years, remembers water issues first affecting him.
It feels like the only people that come to help now are in ambulances.
Kelly wonders if the city would be more responsive to his calls if he lived in a richer part of town. Would his late neighbor have placed so many unresolved that she eventually lost faith in those who are appointed to keep her safe? In fact, he doesn’t really wonder: He’s sure they would have.
“They’d’ve been on out there,” if it was a wealthier neighborhood, Kelly said. The average income in the area is about $15,000, according to census data. “There’s no joke about it.”
To make matters worse for the residents, many of which are retired or living on fixed income from disability payments, Kelly, Dyson, McClinton, Anderson and Cottrell were all stung with monthly water bills costing as much as $5,000 several years ago, an issue that affected thousands of Jackson residents that has yet to be resolved. Some paid them off over years out of fear of having their water turned off. Others ignored it. Some just aren’t receiving their water bills. Anderson hasn’t gotten a bill in the mail in at least two years.
From dirty water, poor water pressure and the late garbage pickup several residents complained about, he feels like he’s the last of the city’s priorities.
“The way they’re doing you, like they damn forgot about you — ‘Oh, we don’t worry about them,’” Kelly said of the City of Jackson. “You’re last on the list.”
Most folks on the street rattle off several causes of their woes, all leading back to one common theme: what they say is the city’s incompetence and inability to agree on the right course of action.
“To me, it’s sad that the mayor and the city council can’t come to agreements on anything,” Dyson said.
Getting by, moving forward
Kelly can tell you how much a case of 24 waters cost at the Food Lion yesterday. It’s the cheapest he’s found. You can get two cases for $7 there. At Sam’s Club, you can get a gallon for $1.28, he said. McClinton keeps a wall-high stack of cases of water bottles in his house.
The most recent water crisis turned several residents’ water yellow for a few days, and they all suffered unpredictable water pressures, sometimes not enough to flush a toilet.
But they are getting by. Anderson said a man who lived nearby walked down the street on Wednesday handed out water bottles “just to be kind.”
Still, they say they need change. They are frustrated to “pay for water they can’t drink,” Anderson said. And maybe this most recent water crisis will be a wake-up call and the start of a change.
“I’m kind of glad that the governor stepped in,” Dyson said. Anderson nodded her head in agreement. “Because if not, there’s no telling. It might have been worse than what it is.”
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