Mississippi Today
Feds propose putting broken Jackson sewer system under Henifin
A federal court Wednesday morning released a proposed agreement that would shift control of Jackson’s deteriorating sewer system under the control of Ted Henifin, who is already overseeing the city’s water system as a third-party manager.
The stipulated order wouldn’t take effect until after a public comment period that will go until Aug. 31, and will include meetings for residents to attend. The Jackson City Council already approved the change in a vote two weeks ago.
“Under today‘s agreement, expedited measures will be taken to address the City of Jackson’s deteriorating sewer infrastructure and inadequate operation and maintenance, which have caused residents and businesses to endure sewage discharges that threaten public health and the environment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Todd Kim said in a press release.
The proposal comes about a decade after Jackson entered into a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency over violations including over 2,300 sanitary sewer overflows — times when raw sewage escaped the system —as well as repeated prohibited bypasses, which are when the city lets untreated or under-treated sewage spill into the Pearl River.
From March 2020 to February 2022, the city allowed over 4 billion gallons of untreated or under-treated wastewater to flow into the Pearl from its Savanna Street treatment plant, according to Wednesday’s court filing.
The city has made little progress with the EPA consent decree, citing a lack of funding to make the required improvements.
Just as with the stipulated order for the water system, this proposal lays out priority projects for Henifin to tackle should he take control. The 11 priority projects include rehabilitating the city’s treatment and interceptor facilities, as well as addressing over 200 sewer line failures throughout Jackson (a list of sewer failure locations are at the end of the proposal).
The filing estimates the projects would cost $130 million, which could be paid for from a few different funding streams: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorized $125 million to help fix the sewer system as part of the Water Resources Development Act. Jackson also received over $8 million in money from American Rescue Plan Act, part of which will be matched by the state, according to the filing.
The proposal was signed by the plaintiffs in the case — the EPA and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality — as well the defendant, the city of Jackson.
“This agreement is an appropriate next step in our enforcement efforts to ensure that the City of Jackson lives up to its responsibility, pursuant to the federal Clean Water Act and Mississippi law, to address and correct issues with its sewer system,” MDEQ Executive Director Chris Wells said in a statement.
Similar to the what U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate approved for Henifin with the water system, the third-party manager won’t have to comply with state contracting laws, as long as he’s not spending money administered by MDEQ, which would include the state’s matching program for ARPA funds.
Once the comment period wraps up, the federal government can withdraw the proposal or ask the federal judge for approval.
The order would require the parties to modify the terms of the 2013 consent decree within three years. Should the stipulated order stand, Henifin would maintain control of the sewer system for four years (until 2027) or until he finished the priority projects.
The proposed order includes a budget of about $1 million for the first year of the order, which includes: $96,000 for Henifin’s salary, living and travel expenses; $280,000 for staffing; and $750,000 for contracting and consultant support.
The EPA said one public meeting for residents to offer feedback will be held on Aug. 21 at the Mississippi e-Center at 1230 Raymond Road in Jackson, from 6 to 8 p.m. The agency said more meetings will be announced later.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1868
Sept. 28, 1868
A massacre took place in Opelousas, Louisiana, one of the worst outbreaks of violence during Reconstruction. When some Black Americans attempted to join the Democratic Party, the Knights of the White Camelia (a white supremacist organization) rushed in to drive them out.
School teacher Emerson Bentley was one of the few white Republicans in the region. He had come to Louisiana to help Black Americans vote and find jobs. The 18-year-old was also an editor for the Republican newspaper, The St. Landry Progress.
Displeased by their depiction, a mob severely beat Bentley. A group of Black Americans moved to rescue him, not knowing that he had already escaped. Of the 29 black men captured by the mob, 27 of them were killed, and the bloodshed continued for weeks. The death toll reached 250, the vast majority of them Black Americans.
Through the Opelousas Massacre and similar acts of violence, “lynching became routinized in Louisiana, a systematic way by which whites sought to assert white supremacy in response to African-American resistance,” historian Michael Pfeifer told Smithsonian magazine. The years following Reconstruction led to a vicious wave of lynchings, not only in the South, but across the U.S.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Former Chief Justice Pittman, who served in all three branches of Mississippi government, dies
Former Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Edwin Lloyd Pittman, who served in multiple state elected offices, including all three branches of government, has died.
A news release from the state Supreme Court announced Pittman, who served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 2001 until 2004, died earlier this week at his Ridgeland home. He was 89.
Pittman was elected to the state Senate in 1964 representing his hometown of Hattiesburg. He went on to serve in the state elected offices of treasurer, secretary of state and attorney general. He served as attorney general from 1984 to 1988 before running unsuccessfully for governor.
After losing the gubernatorial bid in an ultra-competitive Democratic primary that included other statewide elected officials and a past governor, Pittman came back to capture a seat on the state Supreme Court in 1989.
“Chief Pittman provided exemplary leadership to the Mississippi Judiciary as chief justice,” said former Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., who served with Pittman on the state’s highest court “His accomplishments for efficiency, transparency and access to justice had a profound effect on our legal system. He championed the establishment of (shorter deadlines for hearing cases … brought rule changes to allow cameras in the courtroom and improved access to justice for the poor and disadvantaged, to name a few.
“The court system today is better for his untiring efforts and dedication to duty.”
As chief justice, Pittman was credited with making the Supreme Court more transparent, posting dockets and oral arguments online, according to a court press release. He also led the effort to put in place regulations to allow news cameras in the courtroom at a time when only a handful of states were allowing them. Pittman worked to garner public funding to provide access to the judiciary for the needy.
Pittman said at the time, “We have to recognize the fact that we in many communities are frankly failing to get legal services to the people who need it … It’s time that the courts help shoulder the burden of rendering legal services to the needy in Mississippi.”
In 2011, former Gov. Haley Barbour awarded Pittman the Mississippi Medal of Service.
“The people of this state have honored me with a wonderful trip through life,” Pittman said at the awards ceremony.
Current Chief Justice Mike Randolph said, “Even though he served in all these important government positions, he never lost his common touch. I regret that I didn’t get to serve with him. I hope that when I’m done, that I will be as well thought of as he was.”
Randolph, also from Hattiesburg, now holds the post on the court that was held by Pittman.
“He was a consummate politician and public servant. He’s an important figure in Mississippi’s history,” said U.S. Court of Appeals Judge James Graves. Graves was the third Black Mississippian to serve on the modern Supreme Court. Earlier in Graves’ career, he was hired to a position in the Attorney General’s office by Pittman.
Pittman was last in public view when he was asked by then-Attorney General Jim Hood to look at the legality of a frontage road being built in Rankin County to provide easier access to busy Lakeland Drive for a small neighborhood where then Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves lived.
The end result of the controversy is that the access road was not built.
After retiring from the Supreme Court, Pittman joined a law firm in Madison County.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Plans to build Jackson green spaces aimed at tackling heat, flooding and blight
A group of nonprofits in and around the capital city are teaming up to build new green spaces in Jackson, looking to offer environmental benefits such as limiting both flooding as well as a phenomenon known as “heat islands.”
Dominika Parry, a Polish native, founded the Ridgeland-based 2C Mississippi in 2017, hoping to raise awareness around climate change impacts in the state. The group has attempted relatively progressive ideas before, such as bringing climate curriculums to public schools and establishing the state’s first community solar program.
With a lack of political appetite, though, those projects have struggled to get off the ground, Parry explained – “I realized that no one in Mississippi talks about climate change,” she told Mississippi Today. But she’s confident that the green spaces initiative will have a meaningful environmental impact.
In one project with the Farish Street Community of Shalom, 2C Mississippi is building green spaces along the historic Farish Street in downtown Jackson. The groups recently acquired $1.5 million through the Inflation Reduction Act for the idea.
A 2020 study in Jackson from consultant CAPA Strategies identified “heat islands,” or urban areas that absorb more heat because they have fewer trees and bodies of water. The study found that at times during the summer, parts of downtown were over 10 degrees hotter than areas around the edge of the city.
The idea for the spaces, which will go in courtyards between Amite and Griffith Streets, includes new trees, vertical gardens, and a maintained grassy area for gatherings and events like the neighborhood’s Juneteenth celebration (renderings of the project from 2C Mississippi are shown below). Parry said they’ll start to plant the trees in January and have the whole spaces done sometime next year. Then, she plans to monitor the impacts, including on the energy needs of surrounding buildings.
Dorothy Davis, Shalom’s president, said that the new tree canopy will give shelter from the simmering temperatures that brew over the city concrete. It’s a concern in an area where, Davis said, many live without reliable or even any air conditioning. Over a few weeks this summer, as an extension of the 2020 study, she and a group of local students measured the heat index along Farish Street, which Davis said never dipped below 100 degrees.
“It wasn’t surprising because I’ve been in Mississippi all my life, I know how Mississippi heat is,” said Davis, who has been in Jackson since 1963. “But it was very concerning because we have a lot of elderly people in this area especially.”
According to the National Weather Service, which has temperature records dating back to 1896, five of the top 10 hottest years in Jackson have occurred in the last 10 years.
In addition to the Farish Street project, 2C Mississippi is also working on building “microparks” around west Jackson. Voice of Calvary Ministries, another local nonprofit, partners with the city of Jackson to eliminate blight, and, along with some other groups, is working to restore and build new homes in about 150 properties around West Capitol Street near the Jackson Zoo.
“We have a lot of lots that we can really do some reinvestment in, not just with housing, but the parks,” said VOCM’s president and CEO Margaret Johnson. “I think we can offer something new and different to an impoverished area of the city.”
Johnson explained that the area is near a flood zone, and the microparks are a preemptive measure to reduce risk as well as the financial burden of flood insurance.
Many of the lots have been abandoned for years, she said, often after people moved away or an owner died without a family member coming to take care of the property. With no one to tend to the land, it deteriorates, turning into an eyesore.
“It seems to be more concentrated in west Jackson than some other parts of the city,” Johnson said, adding that the area doesn’t have a real park for children to play in or for people to get together. “There hasn’t been any real, new construction in west Jackson, of any significant level, in the last, 20, 25, 30 years.”
So far, VOCM and 2C Mississippi have picked about six neighboring lots on Louisiana Avenue to turn into microparks, which Parry said will be done by the end of 2025. The groups also plan to hold a community meeting Oct. 15 to invite residents’ feedback. Johnson hopes they can eventually expand the idea to other parts of Jackson.
“I think once we do this and people see it, we can go to other parts of the city and do the same thing,” she said. “So, I think this is just the start of something great for the city of Jackson.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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