Living in a city with no water: ‘This is unbearable’:

JACKSON, Miss. — What stood out this week was the calm. The streets were quiet, and residents queued expectantly for resources.

The
entire city of more than 150,000 was without safe drinking water, with
no end in sight. Many residents here say they adapted long ago to
catastrophic government failure.

“Jackson’s
water’s been messed up; I don’t even feel like they should be issuing
people bills,” said Roshonda Snell, 32, who works at a local hotel.
“It’s infected, and you can’t even do nothing with it.”

Snell
is a beneficiary of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program and says she has been using most of the money she receives from
it to buy water for her family for a while. “I spend about $200 on
bottled water every month. That’s mainly what I use that money for, to
buy five big cases of water for the month,” said Snell, a Jackson
native. “I really want to leave Jackson so bad.”

Living in a city with no water: ‘This is unbearable’: JACKSON, Miss. — What stood out this week was the calm. The streets were quiet, and residents queued expectantly for resources.The
entire city of more than 150,000 was without safe drinking water, with
no end in sight. Many residents here say they adapted long ago to
catastrophic government failure.“Jackson’s
water’s been messed up; I don’t even feel like they should be issuing
people bills,” said Roshonda Snell, 32, who works at a local hotel.
“It’s infected, and you can’t even do nothing with it.”Snell
is a beneficiary of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program and says she has been using most of the money she receives from
it to buy water for her family for a while. “I spend about $200 on
bottled water every month. That’s mainly what I use that money for, to
buy five big cases of water for the month,” said Snell, a Jackson
native. “I really want to leave Jackson so bad.”Read More