The Depression forced both political parties to focus on fostering wellbeing, and this was followed by World War II, which brought the country into a single intent to foster wellbeing. The post-war period saw both parties continuing to be focused on fostering wellbeing, and the middle class was created and became they dominant cultural force. But then came Reagan and the American cultural was transformed into one that grotesquely favored the rich, and put very little emphasis on fostering wellbeing. Out of that came the worst wealth inequality in the country’s history, the worst healthcare system in the developed world, attempts to gut unions, and making college education impossibly expensive. It also meant that all the infrastructure built from the 1930s to the 1960s was left without proper maintenance and upgrades. Now we have come to this.
When torrential rainfall in August 2022 pushed the Pearl River in Mississippi to surge well beyond its banks, floodwaters spilled into the suburbs of Jackson and led an already-hobbled water treatment plant to fail.
It was the final stroke in what experts described as a yearslong issue in the making, which eventually left tens of thousands of residents in the city without clean drinking water for weeks.
What happened in Jackson, experts say, is a bellwether for what’s to come if America continues to kick the can down the road in addressing its aging and crumbling water infrastructure. The climate crisis threatens to make those issues even more pressing.
When sea levels rise, summers become hotter or heavy rains lead to more flooding, the country’s water infrastructure – largely built last century and only designed to last roughly 75 years – will be more strained than […]