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David Pryor, popular Arkansas governor and U.S. senator, dies at 89

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Saturday, April 20, 2024

David Pryor, an Arkansas governor and U.S. senator who rose to prominence in the 1970s as part of a wave of moderate “New South” Democratic leaders and who became known on Capitol Hill for his work on behalf of senior citizens and helping create the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, died April 20 at his home in Little Rock, Ark.. He was 89.The death was confirmed by Ernie Dumas, former chief political reporter for the Arkansas Gazette and a friend of Mr. Pryor’s. No cause was noted.Following in a long family tradition of public service, Mr. Pryor spent his entire career in politics except for a post-college stint as a self-described “crusading” small-town newspaper publisher and editor. His two terms as governor — from 1975 to 1979 — were sandwiched between those of fellow Democrat reformers Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton, and he helped the state pivot away from its segregationist past.“I cite him as one of the major reasons why Democrats held on in places like Arkansas much longer than they did in any other southern state,” said Angie Maxwell, director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society at the University of Arkansas. “He made Arkansas punch above its weight in terms of power and influence.”Mr. Pryor launched his political career in 1960, serving six years in the Arkansas House of Representatives before winning a special election for the U.S. House of Representatives, followed by two full terms. In Washington, looking for a cause to distinguish himself, he gained national exposure in 1970 by railing against the treatment of the elderly in nursing homes, saying he had visited a dozen without identifying himself as a congressman and found their operations understaffed and often uncaring.“I have nothing against profit‐making,” he told the Associated Press at the time, “but I am against exploitation. Profits are booming, prices are rising and service is not improving."The problem, he added, was that oversight responsibilities for the nursing home industry spread across nearly two dozen federal agencies and congressional committees. “Everybody seems to look only at his little piece of the picture,” Mr. Pryor said. “That’s why I think there is a pressing need for one committee to go into the whole matter.”When House leadership, citing other priorities, denied him funding to set up a new panel, he established what he called two “government in exile” trailers on a street near the Rayburn House Office Building — room for the 15 volunteer college students and senior citizens who worked on his unofficial “Committee on the Aging.”Although he was soon to leave the House to make a Senate run, Mr. Pryor garnered critical early congressional support for the creation in 1975 of the House Select Committee on Aging. Until it was shuttered in 1993, the committee held hearings on elder abuse and other related topics concerning older Americans.Mr. Pryor lost a close primary race for the U.S. Senate in 1972, nearly ousting the segregationist 30-year incumbent John McClellan, but two years later, he defeated Orval Faubus, another notorious civil rights foe, who was trying for a comeback as governor.Maxwell said Mr. Pryor kept Arkansas on a balanced path between economic growth and environmental protection and made steps forward in gender and racial equality by naming minorities and women to important posts throughout state government, including the first Black and female judges on the Arkansas Supreme Court.After two popular two-year terms as governor, Mr. Pryor ran successfully for the Senate in 1978. He rose to chairman of the chamber’s Special Committee on Aging, where he focused on controlling prescription drug prices. In addition to addressing the concerns of seniors, an important voting bloc, he remained a favorite of constituents with his criticisms of waste, fraud and abuse among government contractors and what he said were astronomical procurement costs.Mr. Pryor was chief sponsor of the 1988 Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which conservative commentator James J. Kilpatrick likened to a “Miranda rule for the people” for those under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Pryor said his legislation, designed to extend rights available to taxpayers involved in disputes with the IRS, would help fix “a tax system that people fear and distrust.” His efforts were at the forefront of a national taxpayer-rights movement.Mr. Pryor overwhelmingly won his third term in the Senate in 1990, but he had a heart attack the next year and heart bypass surgery the year after that. He did not seek reelection in 1996, when Rep. Tim Hutchinson became the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas since Reconstruction.David Hampton Pryor was born Aug. 29, 1934, in Camden, the county seat of Ouachita County in south-central Arkansas. His father was a county sheriff, as was his grandfather. His mother ran unsuccessfully for county circuit clerk in 1926, making her among the first women to seek elective office in the state, and later served 15 years an elected member of the Camden school board.Mr. Pryor worked as a U.S. House page in 1951, when he was 17; before his senior year at the University of Arkansas he spent the summer of 1956 delivering mail on Capitol Hill. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in political science, he married Barbara Lunsford, and they moved back to Camden, where he started and edited a weekly newspaper, the Ouachita Citizen.For the four years he was publisher, he challenged Gov. Faubus’s segregationist stances. He editorialized in favor of sending in federal troops when Faubus sparked a crisis in 1957 by trying to prevent Black students from attending Little Rock High School. He later told the Associated Press that his editorials were “an attempt to appeal to reason in a time of great emotions and stress in the state.”At the paper, which he sold after a few years, he successfully championed a city-manager style of government and other good-governance measures, but he said he soon began to believe that he could have greater impact through making legislation. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1960, at 26, and joined a group of young legislators pushing for reform in the state. He went back to school, receiving a law degree from the University of Arkansas in 1964.Mr. Pryor described his personal life as marked by moments of turbulence. He was early in his term as governor when his wife moved out of the Governor’s Mansion in 1975, saying she was exhausted after 18 years of supporting her husband’s ambitions.“He understood, which was good,” she later told The Washington Post. “At first he was shocked, because I’d never questioned him and I’d never let him down. But after he understood, we spoke to the boys and he told them, ‘It’s her turn.’ We talked to them separately until they understood.”She spent nearly two years living elsewhere in Arkansas, taking classes and helping a movie-producer friend make films, while Mr. Pryor stayed in the Mansion with their three sons. She returned to the family and the marriage continued. Survivors include his wife and sons, David Pryor Jr., Mark Pryor, a Democrat who served two terms as U.S. senator from Arkansas, and Scott Pryor; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.In 1999, Mr. Pryor and his wife established the Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas. Mr. Pryor was later director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and, from 2004 to 2006, the inaugural dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. He also wrote a memoir, “A Pryor Commitment” (2008), and was board chairman emeritus at the University of Arkansas.Throughout his career, Mr. Pryor maintained an unfussy, easygoing persona that kept him popular with constituents. Working alone late one night at the governor’s office, he recalled to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he said he answered a phone personally — only to find an agitated caller on the line demanding to talk to someone “no lower than the governor himself."“Ma’am, there is no one lower than the governor himself,” Mr. Pryor responded.

He received national attention for his Senate work on senior citizens’ and taxpayers’ rights.

David Pryor, an Arkansas governor and U.S. senator who rose to prominence in the 1970s as part of a wave of moderate “New South” Democratic leaders and who became known on Capitol Hill for his work on behalf of senior citizens and helping create the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, died April 20 at his home in Little Rock, Ark.. He was 89.

The death was confirmed by Ernie Dumas, former chief political reporter for the Arkansas Gazette and a friend of Mr. Pryor’s. No cause was noted.

Following in a long family tradition of public service, Mr. Pryor spent his entire career in politics except for a post-college stint as a self-described “crusading” small-town newspaper publisher and editor. His two terms as governor — from 1975 to 1979 — were sandwiched between those of fellow Democrat reformers Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton, and he helped the state pivot away from its segregationist past.

“I cite him as one of the major reasons why Democrats held on in places like Arkansas much longer than they did in any other southern state,” said Angie Maxwell, director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society at the University of Arkansas. “He made Arkansas punch above its weight in terms of power and influence.”

Mr. Pryor launched his political career in 1960, serving six years in the Arkansas House of Representatives before winning a special election for the U.S. House of Representatives, followed by two full terms. In Washington, looking for a cause to distinguish himself, he gained national exposure in 1970 by railing against the treatment of the elderly in nursing homes, saying he had visited a dozen without identifying himself as a congressman and found their operations understaffed and often uncaring.

“I have nothing against profit‐making,” he told the Associated Press at the time, “but I am against exploitation. Profits are booming, prices are rising and service is not improving."

The problem, he added, was that oversight responsibilities for the nursing home industry spread across nearly two dozen federal agencies and congressional committees. “Everybody seems to look only at his little piece of the picture,” Mr. Pryor said. “That’s why I think there is a pressing need for one committee to go into the whole matter.”

When House leadership, citing other priorities, denied him funding to set up a new panel, he established what he called two “government in exile” trailers on a street near the Rayburn House Office Building — room for the 15 volunteer college students and senior citizens who worked on his unofficial “Committee on the Aging.”

Although he was soon to leave the House to make a Senate run, Mr. Pryor garnered critical early congressional support for the creation in 1975 of the House Select Committee on Aging. Until it was shuttered in 1993, the committee held hearings on elder abuse and other related topics concerning older Americans.

Mr. Pryor lost a close primary race for the U.S. Senate in 1972, nearly ousting the segregationist 30-year incumbent John McClellan, but two years later, he defeated Orval Faubus, another notorious civil rights foe, who was trying for a comeback as governor.

Maxwell said Mr. Pryor kept Arkansas on a balanced path between economic growth and environmental protection and made steps forward in gender and racial equality by naming minorities and women to important posts throughout state government, including the first Black and female judges on the Arkansas Supreme Court.

After two popular two-year terms as governor, Mr. Pryor ran successfully for the Senate in 1978. He rose to chairman of the chamber’s Special Committee on Aging, where he focused on controlling prescription drug prices. In addition to addressing the concerns of seniors, an important voting bloc, he remained a favorite of constituents with his criticisms of waste, fraud and abuse among government contractors and what he said were astronomical procurement costs.

Mr. Pryor was chief sponsor of the 1988 Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which conservative commentator James J. Kilpatrick likened to a “Miranda rule for the people” for those under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Pryor said his legislation, designed to extend rights available to taxpayers involved in disputes with the IRS, would help fix “a tax system that people fear and distrust.” His efforts were at the forefront of a national taxpayer-rights movement.

Mr. Pryor overwhelmingly won his third term in the Senate in 1990, but he had a heart attack the next year and heart bypass surgery the year after that. He did not seek reelection in 1996, when Rep. Tim Hutchinson became the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas since Reconstruction.

David Hampton Pryor was born Aug. 29, 1934, in Camden, the county seat of Ouachita County in south-central Arkansas. His father was a county sheriff, as was his grandfather. His mother ran unsuccessfully for county circuit clerk in 1926, making her among the first women to seek elective office in the state, and later served 15 years an elected member of the Camden school board.

Mr. Pryor worked as a U.S. House page in 1951, when he was 17; before his senior year at the University of Arkansas he spent the summer of 1956 delivering mail on Capitol Hill. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in political science, he married Barbara Lunsford, and they moved back to Camden, where he started and edited a weekly newspaper, the Ouachita Citizen.

For the four years he was publisher, he challenged Gov. Faubus’s segregationist stances. He editorialized in favor of sending in federal troops when Faubus sparked a crisis in 1957 by trying to prevent Black students from attending Little Rock High School. He later told the Associated Press that his editorials were “an attempt to appeal to reason in a time of great emotions and stress in the state.”

At the paper, which he sold after a few years, he successfully championed a city-manager style of government and other good-governance measures, but he said he soon began to believe that he could have greater impact through making legislation. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1960, at 26, and joined a group of young legislators pushing for reform in the state. He went back to school, receiving a law degree from the University of Arkansas in 1964.

Mr. Pryor described his personal life as marked by moments of turbulence. He was early in his term as governor when his wife moved out of the Governor’s Mansion in 1975, saying she was exhausted after 18 years of supporting her husband’s ambitions.

“He understood, which was good,” she later told The Washington Post. “At first he was shocked, because I’d never questioned him and I’d never let him down. But after he understood, we spoke to the boys and he told them, ‘It’s her turn.’ We talked to them separately until they understood.”

She spent nearly two years living elsewhere in Arkansas, taking classes and helping a movie-producer friend make films, while Mr. Pryor stayed in the Mansion with their three sons. She returned to the family and the marriage continued. Survivors include his wife and sons, David Pryor Jr., Mark Pryor, a Democrat who served two terms as U.S. senator from Arkansas, and Scott Pryor; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

In 1999, Mr. Pryor and his wife established the Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas. Mr. Pryor was later director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and, from 2004 to 2006, the inaugural dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. He also wrote a memoir, “A Pryor Commitment” (2008), and was board chairman emeritus at the University of Arkansas.

Throughout his career, Mr. Pryor maintained an unfussy, easygoing persona that kept him popular with constituents. Working alone late one night at the governor’s office, he recalled to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he said he answered a phone personally — only to find an agitated caller on the line demanding to talk to someone “no lower than the governor himself."

“Ma’am, there is no one lower than the governor himself,” Mr. Pryor responded.

Read the full story here.
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In November, the Biden administration outlined a plan to replace all 9 million within the next decade, making 50 percent of the $30 billion price tag available from the federal government.   Flint residents are fighting to hang on amid the city’s water crisis. The unemployment rate is now 1.5 times higher than the national average, while 70 percent of children grow up in poverty. Adam Mahoney / Capital B Yet Flint residents and experts told Capital B that the main flaws of the federal government’s plan have been realized in the city over the past decade: It is complicated, time-consuming, and costly to identify and replace water lines. Not to mention, as Shariff explained, replacing lead water lines is not the “magical silver bullet” to eradicate the issue. The lead service line in her home was replaced in 2017, yet her water is still filled with more lead than federal limits allow.  As officials have claimed that the use of water filters and replacement of lead water lines has solved the crisis, including an infamous declaration by former President Barack Obama in 2016, some residents in Flint have felt confused about the true safety of their water.  When approached by Capital B in April, James Johnson explained how a state-conducted test for lead in his drinking water in 2023 returned a clean bill of health. However, public records show Johnson’s property’s lead results were actually 19 parts per billion. The federal limit is 15. “I don’t know what to think [about the water,]” Johnson said after Capital B explained the results. “We just use filters. We have been since ’14, but they said it’s all clean.” Flint officials did not respond to Capital B’s request for data related to the status of its water line identification and replacement work. This month, a federal judge found the city in contempt of court for missing deadlines for lead water line replacement and related work in the aftermath of the water crisis. In addition, as the nation focuses on drinking water, lead lines have created another crisis that rarely gets attention: how lead contamination has torn through kitchens and bathrooms. Flint residents told Capital B that since the crisis began, they’ve had corroded toilets fall through floors, and their shower heads turn black from buildup every few months.  “Dirty water doesn’t just impact service lives,” explained Claire McClinton, a Flint resident and former autoworker. “It’s very naive to think that was the only thing that was impacted, and people do not have the money or support to fix these things.”  All the while, Flint has had amongst the most expensive water bills in the country. A 2016 analysis revealed that the average household was paying more than $850 annually for water services, making it the most expensive average bill in the country. Today, the average bill is $1,200 annually. McClinton is afraid that as the country chugs on with its focus on drinking water, Black communities will be harmed by efforts to cut costs, or worse, boxed out of their access to publicly run water systems. More than 20 percent of Americans now rely on private companies for drinking water, a substantial increase compared to 2019, according to the National Association of Water Companies. On average, private water utilities charge families 59 percent more on their water bills than public utilities.  “We don’t want corporations to benefit from all this spending — we should want to keep our water public,” McClinton said.  Still, public water systems have their challenges supporting Black communities as well. Failing public water systems are 40 percent more likely to serve people of color, and they take longer than systems in white communities to come back into compliance. Funding to reach these communities remains faulty despite the Biden administration’s goal of spending 40 percent of funds on “disadvantaged communities.”  A Capital B analysis found that 27 percent of drinking water funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law went to “disadvantaged communities” in 2022, and the two states that received the most funds characterized for “disadvantaged communities” were Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, where less than 10 percent of residents are Black.  McClinton said it’s bittersweet to watch Flint purportedly influence the nation for the better while things remain “broken” for Black communities.   “The system has failed us. We did all the things you’re supposed to do; we participated in water studies, and our water is still dirty, and our health is still bad,” she said. “There’s this thing where they say every generation lives better than the next generation, but all of that is turned upside down right now, and the water crisis is just a manifestation of it.”  ‘The start of the second civil war’ In a stream of whiteness, Confederate flags, and Make America Great Again signs, the 60 miles between Detroit and Flint tell the story of Black life in Michigan, Welch said. “Because we are a majority here and have conquered [Flint and Detroit], they want to get back at us,” she said.  From left: Hatcher Welch, Angela Welch, and Mac Welch all expressed disgust over the continued handling of Flint’s water, arguing that there is little that could be done to repair harm. Adam Mahoney / Capital B Over the past decade, as Detroit’s financial crisis peaked and Flint’s water crisis began, far-right white-led groups have surged and a white-led militia plotted to abduct the state’s governor. “It feels like the start of the second civil war,” Welch said, all while Flint is “left behind.”   It’s seeing this shift intensify that has led some residents to see deeper racial undertones in not only Flint’s battle over water affordability and rights, but also the nation’s. “The power structure is coalescing over water,” McClinton said.  Flint’s issues began primarily because of a plan that was concocted to save the city money during its water-delivery process. Similar situations are happening outside of Chicago in a majority Black and Latino town, and in Baltimore.  Read Next California communities are fighting the last battery recycling plant in the West — and its toxic legacy Molly Peterson Not to mention the glaring similarities between Jackson and Flint, both majority-Black cities where local Black leadership was overridden by white leaders at the federal and state levels. In Jackson, after an EPA lawsuit against the city allowed the federal government to take control of the water, residents are still fighting to be included in the process.  The attack on Black life has also widened the racial gap within the city, Shariff said.  In a commemorative event headlined by a public health researcher from Michigan State University and attended by roughly 50 people the week before the 10-year-anniversary, just five attendees were Black. It’s events like these, Shariff says, that highlight the disconnect between local leaders, academic researchers, and those directly impacted by the crisis. “All this money these places are spending feels like for nothing,” she said. “People marching in the streets weren’t asking for book talks or community health assessments. We asked for reparations and resources for Black self-determination.” The crisis is a chronic illness For some residents, like Taylor, there is still hope that the settlement checks will hit their bank accounts and improve their lives. Children affected by the water crisis are expected to receive 80 percent of the record settlement. Community activist Nayyirah Shariff said the attack on Black life in Flint has widened the racial gap in the city. Adam Mahoney / Capital B As Flint schools have crumbled in the aftermath of the crises, in addition to experiencing an 8 percent increase in the number of students with special needs, especially among school-age boys, Taylor hopes to use the money to better their educational opportunities and put them through college. However, for others, including Welch and Shariff, the expected payout of $2,000 to $3,000 for adults feels like a slap in the face. There is also a lot of confusion around the settlement process, with two residents telling Capital B they thought the money was already gone, which stopped them from attempting to be a part of the process.  In a lot of ways, although harder to find, opportunities have reached the city in recent years, including through a guaranteed income program for every pregnant person and infant in the city. The new program “prescribes” a one-time $1,500 payment after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and $500 a month during the infant’s first year.  Yet, it still remains challenging to remain confident in change.  “With all the experiences we’ve had over the 10 years, our hopes have been dashed,” explained McClinton, who every April 25 helps to organize a day of commemoration for Flint residents.  As Capital B has reported, the water issues afflicting Black communities are violent in many ways, and it trickles down into increasing situations of despair around housing, mental and physical health, and communal violence. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic widened the racial death gap in Flint, Black residents’ death rate climbed at a rate that was more than twice the city’s death rate between 2014 and 2019, according to Capital B’s analysis of state data. Capital B Several Flint residents explained how the mental health strain caused by the water crisis created a cycle of “disunity” and the inability to trust not just the government or the water flowing out of their pipes, but also the people around them.  “Everyone is just on edge,” Taylor said, “and that has everything to do with the water.”  In the city’s Black areas, it’s hard to find a block without an abandoned home or grassy field full of trash and plastic water bottles. Taylor said it’s depressing to drive through your neighborhood to see your former schools empty, graffitied, and boarded up, or parks closed and desolate. As job opportunities have become harder to find, so has housing. Nearly all of the dozen residents Capital B spoke to for this story said they experienced housing insecurity at times over the past decade.  Capital B Due to a lack of affordable housing options, the average stay at the city’s housing shelter has increased from less than two months to over five. The public housing waitlist has ballooned to two years, even as some public housing buildings still have high levels of lead in the water, including the Richert Manor homes where Welch lived for many years at the height of the water situation.  In the meantime, as race, namely being Black in America, stands as the biggest risk factor for lead poisoning, more so than even poverty or poor housing, Flint residents say their home serves as a warning to other Black communities.  Nationwide, Black children have the highest blood lead levels. As such, even as billions are pumped into fixing the issues, the next generation of Black Americans will remain altered by the impacts of lead poisoning.  As Shariff said: “The water crisis is like having a chronic illness — I mean, it gave me a chronic illness — but it is basically like you’re dealing with it, and it never goes away.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A decade later, Flint’s water crisis continues on Apr 28, 2024.

Crisis
Government
Water

A water crisis in Mississippi turns into a fight against privatization

Thanks to a federal judge, residents of Jackson will have a say in how the city resolves its yearslong water crisis.

In the summer of 2022, heavy rainfall damaged a water treatment plant in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, precipitating a high-profile public health crisis. The Republican Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency, as thousands of residents were told to boil their water before drinking it. For some, the pressure in their taps was so low that they couldn’t flush their toilets and were forced to rely on bottled water for weeks.  Many of the city’s 150,000 residents were wary that their local government could get clean water running through their pipes again. State officials had a history of undermining efforts to repair Jackson’s beleaguered infrastructure, and the city council, for its part, didn’t have the money to make the fixes on its own. So when the federal government stepped in that fall, allocating funding and appointing an engineer to manage the city’s water system, there was reason to believe change may finally be near.  But as the months wore on, hope turned to frustration. The federally appointed engineer, Ted Henifin, began taking steps to run the city’s water system through a private company, despite Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s objections. Advocates’ repeated requests for data and other information about Jackson’s drinking water went unanswered, according to a local activist, Makani Themba, and despite Henifin’s assurances before a federal judge that the water was safe to drink, brown liquid still poured out of some taps. Faced with these conditions, a group of advocates sent the Environmental Protection Agency a letter last July asking to be involved in the overhaul of the city’s water system.  “Jackson residents have weathered many storms, literally and figuratively, over the last several years,” they wrote in the letter. “We have a right and responsibility to be fully engaged in the redevelopment of our water and sewer system.” The letter was followed by an emergency petition to the EPA containing similar requests for transparency and involvement.  Earlier this month, a federal judge granted the advocates their request, making two community organizations, the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign and the People’s Advocacy Group, parties to an EPA lawsuit against the city of Jackson for violating the Safe Drinking Water Act. A seat at the table of the legal proceedings, the advocates hope, will allow the city’s residents to have a say in rebuilding their infrastructure and also ward off privatization. The saga in Jackson reflects a wider problem affecting public utilities across the country, with cash-strapped local governments turning to corporations to make badly needed repairs to water treatment plants, distribution pipes, and storage systems, a course that often limits transparency and boxes locals out of the decision-making.  “This isn’t a uniquely Jackson problem,” said Brooke Floyd, co-director of the Jackson People’s Assembly at the People’s Advocacy Institute. “We need ways for all these cities that need infrastructure repairs to get clean water to their communities.” The roots of Jackson’s water crisis lie in decades of disinvestment and neglect. Like many other mid-sized cities around the country, such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis, Jackson declined after white, middle-class residents relocated to the suburbs, taking tax dollars away from infrastructure in increasing need of repair. Between 1980 and 2020, Jackson’s population dropped by around 25 percent. Today, the city is more than 80 percent Black, up from 50 percent in the 1980s. A quarter of Jackson’s residents live below the poverty line, with most households earning less than $40,000 a year, compared with $49,000 for the state overall. Over the decades, antagonism between the Republican state government and the Democratic and Black-led local government created additional obstacles to updating Jackson’s water and sewage infrastructure. A Title VI civil rights complaint that the NAACP filed with the EPA in September 2022 accused Governor Reeves and the state legislature of “systematically depriving Jackson the funds that it needs to operate and maintain its water facilities in a safe and reliable manner.” The biggest problem, the NAACP argued, was that the state had rejected the city’s proposal for a one percent sales tax to pay for infrastructure updates and by directing funds from the EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund away from the capital city.  “Despite Jackson’s status as the most populous city in Mississippi, State agencies awarded federal funds” from the EPA program three times in the past 25 years, the complaint read. “Meanwhile, the State has funneled funds to majority-white areas in Mississippi despite their less acute needs.” In the absence of adequate resources from the state and local government, Jacksonians have learned to fend for themselves, Floyd told Grist. At the height of the water crisis in 2022, federal dollars helped fund the distribution of bottled water to thousands of residents, but when the money dried up, people organized to secure drinking water for households still reckoning with smelly, off-color fluid running from their taps. When Henifin began posting boil-water notices on a smartphone application that some found hard to use, one resident set up a separate community text service. Floyd said that for some residents, these problems are still ongoing today.  “There’s this sense of, we have to provide for each other because no one is coming,” Floyd said. “We know that the state is not going to help us.” Henifin has told a federal judge that he’s made a number of moves to improve Jackson’s water quality. The private company that he set up, JXN Water, has hired contractors to update the main water plant’s corrosion control and conducted testing for lead and bacteria like E. Coli. But residents and advocates point out that while the water coming out of the system might be clean, the city hosts more than 150 miles of decrepit pipes that can leach toxic chemicals into the water supply. Advocates want the city to replace them and conduct testing in neighborhoods instead of just near the treatment facility, changes that the city has federal money to make. In December 2022, the federal government allocated $600 million to Jackson for repairs to its water system. But the worry is that this money will be spent on other things. Henifin is the one who handles the federal funds. By court order, he has the authority to enter into contracts, make payments, and change the rates and fees charged to consumers.  Themba, the local activist, said that Henifin has not responded to residents’ demands for additional testing and access to monitoring data that already exists. Because JXN Water is a private company, it’s not subject to public disclosure laws requiring this information to be shared with the public. (Henifin did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.)  Themba points to Pittsburgh as an example of a place where residents fought privatization of their water system and secured a more democratic public utility. In 2012, faced with a lack of state and federal funding, the city turned over its water system to Veolia, an international waste and water management giant based in France. Over the following years, the publicly traded company  elected for cost-cutting measures that caused lead to enter the water supply of tens of thousands of residents. A local campaign ensued, and advocates eventually won a commitment from the city government to return the water system to city controlCK? and give the  public a voice in the system’s management. “What we’ve learned from all over the country is that privatization doesn’t work for the community,” Themba said. “We want what works.” The court order that designated Henifin as Jackson’s water manager in 2022 does not outline what will happen once his four-year contract expires in 2026. Last month, the Mississippi Senate passed a bill that would put Jackson’s water in the hands of the state after Henifin steps down, a move that the manager recently said he supports and that Jackson’s city mayor strongly opposes. That bill soon failed in the House without a vote. Now that they are part of the lawsuit, advocates hope they’ll have a chance to influence the outcome, before it’s too late.  “Jackson residents have felt left out of the equation for so long,” Floyd said. “If we lose this, that’s a big deal.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A water crisis in Mississippi turns into a fight against privatization on Apr 26, 2024.

Crisis
Water
Chemicals

Flint residents grapple with water crisis a decade later: ‘If we had the energy left, we’d cry’

Years after the emergency, the Michigan city is yet to replace all lead pipes and affected families are still awaiting justiceEarlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.“She’d been seizure-free for about two years now,” said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. “And they just came back.” Continue reading...

Earlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.“She’d been seizure-free for about two years now,” said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. “And they just came back.”The call took Thomas back to April 2014, when, to save money, the City of Flint switched to a water source that exposed more than 100,000 residents – including up to 12,000 children – to elevated levels of lead and bacteria. Thomas’s family drank bottled water at the time, but they cooked with and bathed in the tap water.Soon after the switch, Thomas and her two children developed rashes on their skin. Then the children began experiencing frequent seizures that sent them in and out of the hospital. Blood tests revealed they had lead poisoning.“I didn’t know how to feel,” she said. “I’ve been depressed, I’ve been frustrated, stressed out – can’t catch a break.”Studies later showed that after officials changed Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, the percentage of children with elevated levels of lead levels in their blood doubled – and in some parts of the city, tripled. The switch also exposed residents to the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, leading to as many as 115 deaths.Despite an outcry from the predominantly African American community, officials at every level of government were slow to respond. It was nearly two years before Barack Obama, then president, declared a state of emergency in Flint. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission, a state-established body, concluded that the poor governmental response to the Flint crisis was a “result of systemic racism”.Now, a decade after the crisis began, kids are still sick, the city is not done replacing lead pipes and families like Thomas’ are still awaiting justice.“The people of Flint will never trust that water again,” said Pastor Alfred Harris of Concerned Pastors for Social Action. Harris was part of a group of pastors who organized protests and water-filter giveaways, met with lawmakers to urge them to stop sourcing water from the Flint River and sued, along with other groups, the city and state in 2016.“Flint was a poor community and majority people of color,” Harris said. “If it had been in another community – a majority white or more affluent community – I think actions would have been taken much sooner.”There is no safe level of lead exposure. The neurotoxin harms nearly all of the body’s functions, is linked to premature births and miscarriages and has been shown to cause learning and behavior problems, among other ailments, in children.A delivery man hauls bottled water outside of the St Mark Baptist church in Flint, Michigan, on 23 February 2016. Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty ImagesIn 2020, the state of Michigan agreed to a $600m settlement with Flint residents. Eighty percent of that sum would go to children who, like Thomas’ kids, were under 18 when they were exposed to Flint River water, and a district court is now reviewing residents’ claims.Settlement funds can’t come soon enough for claimants like Thomas, who said she lost her job as a result of needing to respond to her kids’ health problems. “They haven’t told us anything,” she said. “They keep giving us different dates … but nobody hasn’t seen nothing.”‘It’s like an open sore’A Flint resident for most of her life, Eileen Hayes moved into her townhome in 1996. When lead contaminated her water, she started losing her hair.“Losing hair on the top of your head changes not only how you can wear your hair, but it changes your self-esteem, how you see yourself, and of course that impacts how you carry yourself,” she said.Hayes continues to buy her own bottled water, years after the state stopped supplying it. “It would have to be a massive change that would make me stop using bottled water,” she said.In 2017, as part of a settlement with Flint residents, officials agreed to replace thousands of lead pipes in the city within three years.Hayes, like many residents, received conflicting information about whether her service lines were checked. “I can’t put the issue behind me until we fix the pipes,” Hayes wrote in a 2023 declaration. “The unfinished program is like an open sore to me.”skip past newsletter promotionOur US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionLast month, a judge held the city in contempt of court for failing to comply with the settlement. “It is apparent that the City has failed to abide by the Court’s orders in several respects,” the order read. “And that it has no good reason for its failures.”Workers prepare to replace a lead water service line at the site of the first Flint home with high lead levels on 4 March 2016. Photograph: Bill Pugliano/Getty ImagesA spokesperson for the City of Flint said lead service line replacement is ongoing. “We have completed outreach to more than 31,000 addresses and there are still 1,900 addresses where we have not been able to get consent from residents to do the work,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. The spokesperson said the city completed work at Hayes’ home in 2021. ‘If we had the energy left, we’d cry’Like Hayes and Thomas, Melissa Mays also pays for bottled water out of pocket. She worries about exposure to microplastics from bottled water, but doesn’t trust the tap.In 2014, even as some areas of the city had brown tap water, her water was clear. So she and her family continued drinking it. When the city set a boil water advisory for bacteria, she boiled the water. “Nobody told us that was making it a ton worse – concentrating the metals,” she explained.Her family consumed contaminated tap water for nine months. Now, her three sons have a long list of medical issues and learning challenges. Like Thomas, she too is waiting on settlement funds to help pay for her kids’ healthcare, school tutors and therapy.Mays said the community is still reeling from the “moral injury” of the crisis – state officials knew of the risks long before telling the public. “We are traumatised from being lied to by the same people that continue to tell us everything’s fine and it’s just in our head,” Mays said.A spokesperson for the Michigan department of environment, Great Lakes and energy (EGLE) wrote, “EGLE has worked hard to make sure Flint residents have the facts and data they need to trust their water again.” The department said it had “wholly revamped its approach to public drinking water”, with new offices added to oversee water. The official also noted that Flint’s drinking water has met federal standards since July 2016.The City of Flint said in a statement that it has made major upgrades to water quality monitoring and water infrastructure, including a new backup water source “to ensure residents have access to water in an emergency and will never again be forced to turn to the Flint River as a water source”. While the city’s water is in compliance with federal lead standards of less than 15 ppb, the city spokesperson said they recognize that “no amount of lead in water is safe”.We are traumatised from being lied to by the same people that continue to tell us everything’s fine and it’s just in our headThe Environmental Protection Agency oversees and tracks compliance with public water systems in Michigan, including Flint. A spokesperson from the agency wrote in an email: “Every community deserves clean water to drink, and the Biden-Harris Administration is working to ensure no family has to worry whether their water is safe when they turn on the tap. That’s why EPA efforts to ensure safe, reliable drinking water for Flint residents are ongoing.” The spokesperson added that the EPA is leveraging $15bn in funding from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to identify and replace lead service lines across the country.Four officials from the local, state and federal governments resigned in the wake of the crisis, including one official from the EPA. Nine leaders in Michigan, including former governor Rick Snyder, were charged with felonies and misdemeanors, but the charges were dropped.Like many residents, Mays was shocked. “Nobody went to jail. How does that happen in America?” she asked. “If we had the energy left, we’d cry.”

Crisis
Energy
Water

Nature destruction will cause bigger economic slump in UK than 2008 crisis, experts warn

Green Finance Institute report said further pollution could cut 12% off GDP by 2030sThe destruction of nature over the rest of the decade could trigger a bigger economic slump in Britain than those caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, experts have warned.Sounding the alarm over the rising financial cost from pollution, damage to water systems, soil erosion, and threats from disease, the report by the Green Finance Institute warned that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s. Continue reading...

The destruction of nature over the rest of the decade could trigger a bigger economic slump in Britain than those caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, experts have warned.Sounding the alarm over the rising financial cost from pollution, damage to water systems, soil erosion, and threats from disease, the report by the Green Finance Institute warned that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s.In a report that received input from experts across academia and government, the authors argued that “gradual, year-to year environmental degradation is as detrimental or more so than climate change”.The continued loss of natural habitats in urban and rural areas would compare unfavourably with the financial crisis of 2008, which took about 5% off the value of UK GDP, while the Covid pandemic cost the UK 11% of its GDP in 2020.The academics used three scenarios to construct the report: domestic risks from continued UK environment breakdown; international risks – including destruction to nature in countries which are key UK trading partners; and a health scenario, focusing on the dangers of a fresh global pandemic.All three took into account current trends in environmental breakdown – including water and air pollution, soil health erosion and biodiversity loss – resulting in a hit to GDP worth up to 3%, or about £70bn by the late 2020s.The report then added “acute risks” on top of these trends – including floods, droughts and wildfires – which would result in a 6% loss to GDP in the domestic and international scenarios, and a 12% hit in a health scenario, reflecting the extreme dangers to the UK economy from a renewed pandemic.Ministers are expected to take an interest in the report amid concern over the potential dangers to the economy from nature breakdown. Environment minister Richard Benyon said the report showed that nature “underpins the health of our economy and it is under threat from a global nature crisis”.The former Conservative MP, whose family controls a 5,600-hectare (14,000-acre) estate in west Berkshire, southern England, said the responsibility to conserve nature “lies with all sectors and sections of society, and green finance has a crucial role to play”.He said: “The findings in this report will help people and institutions across the corporate and finance sectors understand that it is in their own interests to go further and faster for the planet to protect it for future generations.”Shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, blamed the government for the UK becoming “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world”.Saying that the UK needed “to reverse the tide of destruction”, Reed committed Labour to cleaner air and water “and growing nature-rich habitats for wildlife to thrive”.The Green Finance Institute describes itself as the UK and Europe’s “principal forum for innovation in green finance” bringing together banks, academics, philanthropists and government bodies to develop climate-friendly policies and financial products.The report warned that unless action is taken, UK banks will need to reduce their exposure to the worst hit industries or find themselves increasing the risk of losses from bad loans. About 50% of the extra cost will come from the loss of nature overseas that the UK relies on to provide food, natural resources and trade.Partly funded by the government with input from the Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the authors also relied on advice and information from the Bank of England, Oxford and Reading universities, the UN’s environment programme, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.The report said: “The impacts of biodiversity loss and environmental degradation will not be felt alone but will compound with climate risks. Both are happening at once and there are strong feedback effects between the loss of natural capital and climate change.”The study follows a Treasury-backed review in 2021 by the Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta, who found that the world was being put at “extreme risk” by the failure of economics to take account of the rapid depletion of the natural world.Last year, the government agency Natural England launched its Nature Returns programme to coordinate efforts across government and the private sector to explore how the UK can best use land in England “to address climate change whilst producing food and promoting thriving nature”.The agency said it wanted “to mobilise the billions in private investment that government estimates we need to meet our national net zero commitments”.

Crisis
Nature
Water

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Reboot

Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.

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Allergy Alert: Paranoia in Our Immune System

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The Kodiak Queen

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Precarious

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Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse

A documentary that examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, illegal hiking adventurers (known as “stalkers”), extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the mysterious, ghostly landscape, where trees and forest animals have reclaimed land abandoned by villagers. Even as survivors continue to reckon with a dishonest government’s attempts to cover up the extent of the disaster, and as humanity faces new nuclear incidents in place like Fukushima, the Chernobyl site has turned into a bizarre tourist attraction, drawing seekers with a taste for the post-apocalyptic. (a Cultures Of Resistance film)

Crisis
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