By Kate Mabus
Three years ago, a man with white hair and a ruddy grin went around one neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi, daring residents to drink the tap water. He鈥檇 buy you a drink, but only if you had a glass of water first. He鈥檇 buy your groceries, but first you had to take the case of bottled water out of your shopping cart. Residents of the capital city had been under a boil-water notice for weeks, and it had just been lifted: Distrust was still high, and the water was still brown. Not everyone took Ted Henifin up on the drink, but Jacksonians were more than willing to let this guy buy their groceries鈥攅ven if it meant going back for the bottled water.
In August 2022, Jackson entered a state of emergency after flooding overwhelmed the city鈥檚 fragile infrastructure, leaving residents without running water to drink, cook, brush their teeth, or even flush their toilets. Periods of low pressure and subpar service were nothing new for Jacksonians, 27 percent of whom live in poverty and 82 percent of whom are Black. The