Congressional committees probe Mississippi's water spending

Two legislature committees are asking Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves to explicate however his authorities is distributing hundreds of millions of dollars of national funds for h2o infrastructure amid allegations that the Republican-led authorities withheld resources from the predominantly Black metropolis of Jackson.

The letter from House Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and House Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) is portion of a legislature probe of the superior city’s h2o crisis. It’s decrepit h2o strategy subjected residents to much than 300 boil h2o orders successful the past 2 years and near residents without drinking h2o for days precocious this summertime aft flooding on the Pearl River knocked retired the system’s pressure.

The details: In the letter, the lawmakers inquire Reeves to item which communities the authorities volition nonstop national backing from the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law to, and to explicate those communities’ radical demographics and colonisation sizes. They besides inquire Reeves to picture the “additional furniture of review” that applications from the metropolis of Jackson are taxable to.

The lawmakers besides privation to cognize whether the state’s program for spending the astir $75 cardinal successful h2o infrastructure backing from the bipartisan infrastructure instrumentality it is slated to person this twelvemonth volition beryllium revised. That program presently does not send any backing to Jackson and caps “principal forgiveness” — that is, backing that is fundamentally a assistance — astatine $500,000. Experts person estimated that repairing Jackson’s drinking h2o strategy could outgo arsenic overmuch arsenic $1 billion, and the headdress greatly limits the city’s quality to usage national funds for the work.

“We impulse you to instrumentality enactment to support the wellness and information of Jackson residents and nonstop backing to Jackson instantly to hole this beingness and decease issue,” Maloney and Thompson wrote.

The context: The legislature enquiry comes arsenic EPA is reviewing a Civil Rights Act complaint filed by the NAACP alleging that Mississippi violated the instrumentality by discriminating against Jackson connected the ground of contention successful distributing national h2o funds.

EPA’s Inspector General’s Office has besides launched a probe of the city’s h2o crisis.

Jackson’s h2o strategy is getting a near-term infusion of funds, though; Congress sent $20 cardinal successful exigency funding to the city, done the Army Corps of Engineers, arsenic portion of a stop-gap spending measurement passed precocious past month.