The situation remains dire for many residents of Jackson, Mississippi, as the city enters its sixth day since a major water plant failed, leaving thousands without access to clean tap water.   

  Efforts to restore the supply failed on Friday when a chemical imbalance and reduced water pressure were detected.   

  “It’s like repairing the plane while it’s still flying.  You have to be very careful how you fix it so you can stay flying,” Jim Craig, Mississippi health department senior deputy and director of health protection, said Friday night during a news conference.   

  “It’s the same thing we’re trying to produce water.  All that water demand has to keep coming up and every time we have to do some maintenance, then we have to offset some of that,” explained Craig.   

  The city of about 150,000 has been under a boil water notice since July 30 – and then flooding caused by heavy rains last weekend led to a chemical imbalance at the OB Curtis water treatment plant.   

  Since then, the lives of Jackson residents have been turned upside down, leaving them to wait in long lines under a blazing sun in blistering heat for bottled water they can use to drink, cook or brush their teeth.  He also closed the schools.   

  “We pay water bills all the time and we can’t use the water,” Jackson resident Corean Wheeler said.  “We feel like we’re living in a third-world country in America, and that’s kind of bad.”   

  But progress has been made, according to state and local officials.   

  Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba pointed to “two consecutive days of profits” during a news conference Friday, while also acknowledging that “not all residents have pressure or water.”   

  “The team is there 24/7 to make sure these gains are consolidated or maintained,” he said.   

  On Friday morning, Craig noted that the treatment plant was pumping water at 85 PSI, which is a unit known as pounds per square inch, measuring the pressure in the lines.  It dropped to 77.2 PSI later in the day, he said.   

  The reduction means areas farther from the plant and at higher elevations may still have little to no water pressure, according to a news release from the city.  The goal was to get pressure levels to 87 PSI, the city said.   

  By Saturday afternoon, city officials said most of Jackson should have water pressure, according to a Facebook post.   

  The water plant made “significant gains” from Friday night into Saturday, increasing the plant’s total output to 86 PSI with a goal of reaching 87 PSI.   

  “The outlook is very solid.  However, additional challenges as repairs and adjustments are made leave the potential for ongoing fluctuations,” the city’s statement said.   

  The city said some remaining cases in South Jackson may still experience low or no pressure as work continues at the plant Saturday on both the membrane and conventional systems.   

  As crews work to increase water pressure, Lumumba warned that another infrastructure issue could be on the horizon.   

  “As they are able to increase the pressure in the plant to levels not seen in many years, the challenge then is if we have pipes bursting across the city,” he said.  “We know we have fragile pipes, we have aging pipes as our water treatment plants age.”   

  In early 2020, the water system failed an Environmental Protection Agency inspection, which found that the drinking water had the potential to harbor harmful bacteria or parasites.   

  Residents were also without water for a month when pipes froze and burst during a 2021 winter storm.   

  The problems are largely systemic — old and leaky pipes, malfunctioning treatment plants and insufficient money to fix the problems, according to a Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting report published by the Clarion Ledger in January.   

  In July 2021, the EPA and the city entered into an agreement to address “long-term challenges and make necessary improvements to the drinking water system.”  The EPA also recently announced $74.9 million in federal water and sewer infrastructure funds for Mississippi.   

  Advocates have previously pointed to systemic and environmental racism as among the causes of Jackson’s ongoing water problems and a lack of resources to address them.  About 82.5% of Jackson’s population identifies as Black or African American, according to census data, while the state legislature is majority White.   

  Staffing at the plant was also a problem, officials said.   

  Six of the 11 water reservoirs have reached stable levels and the rest are in the process of improving their levels, the city noted in a news release.   

  In the meantime, officials are still urging residents to boil their water.   

  For Jackson to reach a clean water benchmark, the state health department must test 120 water samples from different locations over two days, and all samples must return clean results, the governor said.   

  “I can commit to you today that we will continue to advise the people of Jackson to boil their water until we get to the bottom of it,” said Gov. Tate Reeves.   

  It also added seven state water distribution facilities distributed nearly 2.8 million bottles of water in less than 24 hours on Thursday.   

  President Joe Biden also approved an emergency declaration for Jackson and will allow Mississippi to tap critical resources to respond to the crisis, Reeves said.