DOJ appointee releases new plan for ‘tenuous’ Jackson water

By MICHAEL GOLDBERG
Associated Press/Report for America

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The interim manager appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice to reform the troubled water system in Mississippi’s capital city has released a new financial plan to change Jackson’s billing system and spend hundreds of millions of federal relief funds paying down the system’s debt. The plan released Friday would relieve the water system of its debt and introduce a new way to charge for water. Repeated breakdowns have caused many in the city of about 150,000 to go days and weeks at a time without safe running water. But legislation moving through Mississippi’s Republican-controlled legislature would ban parts of the plan from taking effect.