Floods in Jackson, Miss. inundated the city's main water treatment plant, leaving most residents without drinking water. WSJ's Rachel Wolfe says much of the nation's water infrastructure is aging and in disrepair, and many cities could face their own impending crises.

-Jackson Water Crisis Forces Cities to Confront Their Own Aging Infrastructure 

-Jackson Water Crisis Has No Clear End Date, Mississippi Officials Say 

-The Fight Over Water in the West 

-One Town's Fight Against 'Forever' Chemicals 

This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Ryan Knutson: Last week, torrential rainfall and flooding hit Jackson, Mississippi, the state's capital.

Speaker 2: The governor of Mississippi is now declaring a state of emergency after days of heavy rainfall in the central part of the state. Flooding is now a major concern.

Ryan Knutson: The flood exposed a problem the city's been dealing with for years. Its water infrastructure is falling apart.

Speaker 3: Flooding damaged the city's water treatment facility over the weekend causing the plant to fail. But this is not the first time Mississippi's capital has experienced a water crisis.

Speaker 4: Jackson's aging pipes have left the city in crisis for years. Now the National Guard has been called in to help-

Ryan Knutson: Many of Jackson's 150,000 residents were left without running water.

Kametrica Finch: Jackson is dealing with no water. Some residents had little water pressure, some residents had no water pressure.

Ryan Knutson: That's Kametrica Finch. She lives in South Jackson and works with a nonprofit called Operation Good. I called her yesterday as she was handing out water to fellow residents.

Kametrica Finch: We're here Monday through Sunday basically. We're giving out water to all of the members of the community who need it because of the contamination of the water that the city of Jackson is sending out through the tap.

Ryan Knutson: Officials say water pressure's been restored, but the water's still not safe to drink without boiling it first. And it could take months of repairs before it's drinkable again. And have you had a chance to talk to the people who are coming to get water? What do they say?

Kametrica Finch: Yes, they're frustrated. They're angry because it's putting them in a bad inconvenience. People are stretching to try to buy bottled water when you're stretching, to already try to pay your water bill.

Ryan Knutson: But this isn't the first time Jackson has faced a situation like this. A lot of its water infrastructure, from the pipes in the ground to the water treatment facility, is aging and in desperate need of repairs. It's a situation that's playing out all over the country and one that could have big consequences. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Wednesday, September 7th. Coming up on the show, the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi and what it shows about America's water infrastructure. The problems facing Jackson aren't entirely unique. Our colleague, Rachel Wolfe, has been looking into the country's water systems and she says they are not in good shape.

Rachel Wolfe: America's water infrastructure is crumbling beneath our feet. There are 2.2 million miles of pipes and there's a break in that pipe system every two minutes.

Ryan Knutson: America's water systems rely on a huge network of pipes, pumps, and water treatment facilities that take water from sources like lakes and rivers, clean it, and then deliver it to your sink. But a lot of this infrastructure is very old. Many water treatment facilities were built in the 1970s and are reaching the end of their lifespan. And the pipes that carry water to your home can be even older. In some cities, pipes can even be around 100 years old.

Rachel Wolfe: And those pipes are where we see a lot of the leaks. That's where they're cracking at a rate of a crack every two minutes. A break in a pipe doesn't mean that you're going to see a geyser squirting out into the street, but it substantially weakens the pipe. It limits its ability to provide water, and it contributes to the fact that over 14% of the treated water in America is lost to leaks.

Ryan Knutson: Wow. It's just spilling out into the ground.

Rachel Wolfe: Exactly. It goes straight down the storm drains.

Ryan Knutson: Jackson has faced problems with all aspects of its water system for years, like in February, 2021 when water was shut off due to storms. The system has so many problems that residents like Kametrica Finch are regularly told to boil their water before using it in order to kill all the germs.

Kametrica Finch: Over the years living here, I've seen a hundreds of boil water notices. There have been a lot of inconveniences where pipes freeze and we don't have water.

Ryan Knutson: Mm-hmm. So you've been having water problems in Jackson pretty much the whole time you've lived there.

Ryan Knutson: In fact, there was even a boil water advisory in effect before the flood hit last week. How did you find out that there was no water and what went through your mind in that moment?

Kametrica Finch: Okay, when I found out there was no water, I was actually out at a distribution site passing out water. And I live in the South Jackson neighborhood. And when I left the distribution center for lunch and I went home to do some paperwork and stuff and I was turning on the water and it drip, drip and I was like, "What is going on here?" So I called my husband and I asked him, I was like, "Hey, can you ask your cousin around the corner, do they have water?" And he said, "He just asked me the same thing." So I was like, "What is going on?" I'm not going to tell you exactly what I said, but what's going on? You know?

Ryan Knutson: It was a little bit more colorful than that.

Kametrica Finch: Yeah, but what's going on?

Ryan Knutson: Flooding had overwhelmed the city's main treatment plant, leaving little to no water flowing through the pipes. It meant that people like Kametrica had to survive on bottled water only.

Kametrica Finch: So that night it took me two cases of water to flush toilets, two cases of water to cook and wash dishes.

Ryan Knutson: Water didn't flow out of Kametrica's taps for three days. And then when water pressure finally did come back-

Kametrica Finch: It was like dirt colored, like black, dirty, brown looking. So we were running water in a tub. The water color, it looked like brown.

Ryan Knutson: Ugh. So it's not even water that you can like boil to do anything with. It's just like-

Kametrica Finch: Yeah. Yes. Basically. All right, on top of that, the water has a strong urine-like smell.

Kametrica Finch: It doesn't smell right. So then they put out a notice. Hey, close your eyes and mouth or all this good stuff when you're taking a shower. Who wants to take a shower in pissy water?

Ryan Knutson: No kidding. The water crisis ground the city to a halt. Public schools had to move online. Businesses struggled to operate, and the governor declared a state of emergency. City and state officials say the water pressure's now been fully restored but Mississippi's governor said Jackson's overall problems could take billions of dollars to fix.

Rachel Wolfe: Officials say it could take months in order to make the necessary repairs.

Ryan Knutson: That's a long time to go without having clean water coming out of your tap.

Rachel Wolfe: Absolutely. They're hoping that they'll be able to restore service even if they don't completely fix the system in that time.

Ryan Knutson: Rachel says that residents told her the water treatment facility and other city services have been neglected for years.

Rachel Wolfe: Jackson is Mississippi's biggest city, it's the capital, and it's also 80% black. And residents say that they've been ignored by the national and state government for decades, and that the water infrastructure is one example of many quality of life issues that make it much harder to live in Jackson than it should be. The residents I spoke with say that they love living in Jackson, they love Jackson, and that it's ridiculous that this basic service is out of reach.

Ryan Knutson: But it's not just Jackson that face problems like this. Water utilities all across the country rely on decades-old infrastructure that's in desperate need of repairs and replacement, and many don't have the money to do it.

Rachel Wolfe: Jackson is an example of what happens when investments are not made to a community's water infrastructure and utilities across the country are worried that if they don't receive the money that they need to update their systems, that they could be the next Jackson. They don't know where that money is going to come from. What we're seeing right now in Jackson could happen anywhere in the US. It could be your community next.

Ryan Knutson: Why it's so hard to fix water infrastructure, that's after the break. So what are water utilities doing to try to upgrade this infrastructure?

Rachel Wolfe: So water utilities are trying to replace their old pipes and upgrade their water treatment facilities. They're enlarging their reservoirs and trying to make it more resilient to the increasing threat of climate change.

Ryan Knutson: Climate change is making things worse. Because weather is more severe, it's putting a lot more strain into some systems. Rachel recently talked to the water director in Santa Cruz, California who says that the city is also dealing with these issues.

Rachel Wolfe: So in Santa Cruz, instead of getting gradual rain over the course of a few months, they're getting two or three huge storms a year. And that really limits the utility's ability to provide clean drinking water. It makes a lot harder to filter out pollutants.

Ryan Knutson: Because the system's just getting flooded all at once, they're getting sort of all their water like-

Ryan Knutson: ... at the same time.

Rachel Wolfe: They're getting all their water in two or three storms rather than gradually, and that makes it really hard for them to do their jobs. So they're worried.

Ryan Knutson: Utilities want to fix aging systems and make them more resilient, but many are struggling to come up with the money. Over the years, federal government spending on water infrastructure has declined. Nowadays, water utilities are almost entirely dependent on water bills to maintain and replace aging pipes and pumps.

Rachel Wolfe: Water utilities get 90% of their funding directly from their residents' water bills. So that's really different from how we pay for bridges or roads or subway lines. That money comes mostly from taxes.

Ryan Knutson: So to pull in more money, many water utilities end up raising water bills.

Rachel Wolfe: Water bills on the whole are outpacing inflation. They're up over 46% over the past 10 years according to the Labor Department, whereas the average increase for all items is just about 29%.

Ryan Knutson: But there's a limit to how much money utilities can raise through water bills. For one, rate hikes often have to be approved by local governments, and, unlike other goods, the price of water can't just go up forever.

Rachel Wolfe: Since this money is coming directly from your bills, utilities say that they can't raise rates fast enough to keep up with the rate of decay and the impact that climate change is having on their systems. Otherwise they'll price people out of having service. So you can't have people not be able to afford their water bills, but you also can't have a system that's falling apart because they can't afford to fix it. So it's this lose-lose situation. They can't raise rates enough in order to do everything they need to do.

Ryan Knutson: Utilities can get some money from states and the federal government. In fact, some money is already on its way.

Rachel Wolfe: President Biden allotted 55 billion as part of the infrastructure bill to improve access to safe drinking water. But that's a fraction of the more than trillion dollars that the American Waterworks Association says is needed over the next decade or so in order to just keep our system at its current level of functionality.

Ryan Knutson: And without enough funding, utilities are left to patch up old pieces of infrastructure rather than replacing it. How big of a deal is this?

Rachel Wolfe: This is a huge deal. This is about the water that we drink, that keeps us safe from disease, that we can wash our hands, that's more important than electricity.

Ryan Knutson: In Jackson, Kametrica says she has little faith the problem will be fixed for good. How does all of this make you feel about Jackson?

Kametrica Finch: Honestly, let me make it a nice version. The way I feel about Jackson is that they need to do better. They need to take time to really invest within this city and get things that are needed to make our city thrive. This is the capital city, and it should look like the capital city. It should function like a capital city.

Ryan Knutson: That's all for today, Wednesday, September 7th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Alyssa, Lukpat and Cameron McWhirter. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Kate Linebaugh is the co-host of The Journal. She has worked at The Wall Street Journal for 15 years, most recently as the deputy U.S. news coverage chief. Kate started at the Journal in Hong Kong, stopping in Detroit and coming to New York in 2011. As a reporter, she covered everything from post-9/11 Afghanistan to the 2004 Asian tsunami, from Toyota's sudden acceleration recall to General Electric. She holds a bachelor degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and went back to campus in 2007 for a Knight-Wallace fellowship.

Ryan Knutson is the co-host of The Journal. Previously, he spent more than four years in the newsroom covering the wireless industry, and was responsible for a string of scoops including Verizon's $130 billion buyout of Vodafone's stake in their joint venture, Sprint and T-Mobile's never ending courtship and a hack of the 911 emergency system that spread virally on Twitter. He was also a regular author of A-heds, including one about millennials discovering TV antennas. Previously, he reported for ProPublica, PBS Frontline and OPB, the NPR affiliate station in Portland, Ore. He grew up in Beaverton, Ore. and graduated from the University of Oregon.