The lawmakers also want to know whether the state’s plan for spending the roughly $75 million in water infrastructure funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law it is slated to receive this year will be revised. That plan currently does not send any funding to Jackson and caps “principal forgiveness” — that is, funding that is essentially a grant — at $500,000. Experts have estimated that repairing Jackson’s drinking water system could cost as much as $1 billion, and the cap greatly limits the city’s ability to use federal funds for the work.
“We urge you to take action to protect the health and safety of Jackson residents and direct funding to Jackson immediately to fix this life and death issue,” Maloney and Thompson wrote.
The context: The congressional inquiry comes as EPA is reviewing a Civil Rights Act complaint filed by the NAACP alleging that Mississippi violated the law by discriminating against Jackson on the basis of race in distributing federal water funds.
EPA’s Inspector General’s Office has also launched a probe of the city’s water crisis.
Jackson’s water system is getting a near-term infusion of funds, though; Congress sent $20 million in emergency funding to the city, through the Army Corps of Engineers, as part of a stop-gap spending measure passed late last month.
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