JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — “Several areas of inadequate oversight and enforcement” by state and federal agencies contributed to a water crisis in Mississippi’s capital city that left tens of thousands of people without clean drinking water for weeks in 2021 and 2022, a regulator said.

The Mississippi Department of Health did not consistently document deficiencies in Jackson’s water system or notify city authorities of significant problems after the department conducted sanitation surveys and annual inspections from 2015 to 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General said in a report released Monday.

“MSDH’s oversight failures obscured Jackson’s long-standing challenges, allowed the problems to grow over time and ultimately contributed to the system’s failure,” said the inspector general, an independent group within the EPA that began investigating Jackson’s water problems in September 2022.

Because of these deficiencies, the EPA did not become aware of the extent of the management and operational problems until it inspected the Jackson system in February 2020, the inspector general added.

State health department officials will respond to the inspector general’s report after reviewing it, spokesman Greg Flynn told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

FILE – EPA Administrator Michael Regan (right) talks with reporters at the OB Curtis Water Treatment Plant, a facility based in Ridgeland, Mississippi, near Jackson, Mississippi, about the city’s longstanding water problems, Nov. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Rogelio V. Solis

About 25% of Jackson’s residents live in poverty, and the city has struggled for years with water quality problems and staff shortages at its water treatment plants.

In early 2021, a cold snap froze equipment at a water treatment plant in Jackson, leaving thousands of people with little or no water pressure for weeks. People fetched water in buckets from distribution points to flush toilets and bathe, and the National Guard helped distribute drinking water.

In January 2022, the EPA announced that Jackson’s water system was in violation of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The system nearly collapsed in August and September 2022 after heavy rains exacerbated problems at a wastewater treatment plant, leaving tens of thousands of people without water for drinking, bathing, cooking or flushing.

The EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center found that Jackson’s system issued more than 750 boil water notices from 2016 to 2020. Customers are urged to boil water because pipe bursts or distribution system failures can introduce bacteria or other contaminants into the system.

The center also found that there were more than 7,300 breaks in water distribution pipes in Jackson from 2017 to 2021. The report says these occurred at an average annual rate of 55 breaks per 100 miles (161 kilometers) of pipe, “significantly higher than the industry average” of no more than 15 breaks per 100 miles of line per year.

The inspector general’s report said that since 2016, a distribution line has broken, leaking 4 to 5 million gallons (15.1 to 18.9 million liters) of water a day – enough to fill five to nearly eight Olympic-sized swimming pools a day – according to a former interim director of the Jackson Department of Public Works. That equates to a loss of about 10 to 13 billion gallons (37.9 to 49.2 billion liters) between 2016 and 2022, the report said.

In addition to water pressure issues, Jackson has also had water quality problems for years. Due to concerns about lead levels, the city has advised people to avoid hot tap water for drinking or cooking and to use only filtered or bottled water for baby formula.

In late 2022, a federal judge appointed an independent administrator to manage the Jackson water system.

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