Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) said it is “a great day to not be in Jackson,” as the state’s capital city continues to recover from the water crisis.
Reeves made the comments on Friday in Hattiesburg, Mississippi during the groundbreaking ceremony for Jones Capital LLC headquarters, a Houston-based private equity firm.
“I’ve got to tell you; it is a great day to be in Hattiesburg. It’s also, as always, a great day to not be in Jackson,” Reeves said. “I feel like I should take off my emergency manager director hat and leave it in the car and take off my public works director hat and leave it in the car.”
Mississippi Free Press reporter Ashton Pittman, flagged Reeves’ remarks and noted that an overwhelming majority of Jackson’s residents are Black.
The remarks came one day after officials lifted a boil water advisory that has been in place in Jackson since July after severe flooding crippled the city’s primary water treatment center.
For seven weeks, residents of Jackson could not find drinkable water and even now Reeves said the system is not back to running perfectly as yet.
“The system is still imperfect, and we’re going to address issues throughout the duration of the state’s response,” he said on Thursday. “It is possible, although I pray not inevitable, that there will be further interruption. We cannot perfectly predict what will go wrong with such a broken system.”
City officials have advised residents to let their faucets run for several minutes before attempting to drink the water.
