Jackson's Water Crisis and the Business of Beverages

Jackson Mississippi Resevoir

JACKSON, MS—Any given day, the residents of Jackson, Mississippi, could receive a message instructing them to boil their tap water before consuming it. The city has been plagued by an aging and faulty water system that regularly results in low pressure, sedimentation and bacterial contamination. Collapses in the plumbing system are a common culprit. The notorious Yazoo clay is common scape goat.

Depending on who you ask, some Jacksonians drink tap water without hesitation, while others do everything with store-bought bottled water. Jackson has a number of infrastructural issues, but potable water is a fundamental necessity of life. Without a question, the city’s water woes are a crisis for the average Jacksonian, but the situation also is costly to businesses selling beverages in the city. The water crisis degrades public trust in beverages, costs businesses more money, and hinders the development of new beverage entrepreneurs.

In a recent press release, Waikinya Clanton, The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi state director, said, “The people of Jackson are suffering daily. Residents and business owners are paying a costly price for the gross negligence of state leadership.”  Speaking to some of those business owners, Jackson’s water crisis is a major consideration in the city’s economic development.

Mississippi State Capitol Building

For restaurants, coffee and tea shops, bars, breweries, and more, the water crisis presents a difficult challenge: if customers are concerned about what they drink in their own homes, how do you get them to drink at your establishment? The systemic failure of the municipal supply not only degrades public trust in the government, but also in anyone else that might be providing water from that supply. 

At the most visible level, bars and restaurants need to provide their customers with drinking water. Mississippi Today reported on the high cost of drinking water (and clean ice) back in 2022. One restaurant reported that it was spending close to $2,500 per week to ensure clean water and ice were available to customers. Providing potable water is not a business choice, it is a necessity to get customers in the door to order food in the first place. The situation, in short, is forcing their hand and costing them dearly. 

Beverage manufacturers, too, have concerns and negative experiences with Jackson’s water. Breweries and distilleries in the city consume a large amount of municipal water as an input into the final products.. But, it should be noted, most large scale manufacturers will have water filtration as part of their facilities regardless of where they are based. In order to create reliable, consistent products, the water feed must be chemically consistent.  

Cathead Vodka Jackson Mississippi

Nevertheless, Jackson presents some unique challenges. Cathead Distillery, a local spirits maker with Mississippi Delta roots and a bias for the blues, makes vodka, hard seltzers, bourbon, and gin. Head distiller Gabe Sandoval confirms that their distillery, just behind the downtown Jackson Convention Complex, is equipped with both reverse osmosis and charcoal filters. 

However, as low pressure in the municipal water lines began to allow more and more of the fine sediment of Yazoo clay into the pipes, the distillery had to add a prefilter to their system. That is, the water was so full of mud, that their carbon filter was becoming backed up. All of the water Cathead uses runs through their filters, including the water that runs through their condensers, never to be consumed by humans. 

There is a second distillery in Jackson, too, but it doesn’t exist yet. That is, in part, due to Jackson’s water infrastructure. Trey Malone, a local Mississippian who has extensive experience in beverage manufacturing thanks to his work at Common Collabs with contract cold brew coffee in Los Angeles, has dreams of bringing rum to Mississippi. 

He readily acknowledges that any beverage manufacturer needs to filter its water, “You need to do reverse osmosis regardless of where you are.” He explains, “It’s the only way that you can have a consistent product. We have way more consistency starting from a net zero practice.” Yet his new rum distillery, which will occupy Jackson’s old Lucky Town Brewery along Mill Street, is delayed indefinitely. 

Cathead Distillery Mississippi Blues

Malone tells a graphic tale. Years before his distillery project came to light, a sewage line had collapsed at Mill Street and Livingston. Instead of fixing the problem, the city circumvented it with a pump. Last year in September, the pump failed. The old brewery, soon to be distillery, was closest to the failure and has seen sewage come up from the break and flow into storm drainage to the Pearl River. 

This problem with the municipal water infrastructure, has put the entire project on pause. “The elevation makes my plumbing fixtures in line with sewer.” says Malone, “I can’t install sinks, I can’t flush my toilets, I can’t start a manufacturing business, I can’t cut into any sewer line. But I’m much more concerned about the health factor.” If he cuts into the pip, his distillery will become the lowest point in the sewer. 

Malone’s problem is not unique. These collapses are pat of the larger problem. The old pipes let in mud and bacteria, and let out sewage. Malone, whose distillery is set to be in the Midtown neighborhood, sees this as a missed opportunity for the revitalization of an area. Midtown, like many other parts of Jackson, has fallen on hard times. Recent years have seen efforts to bring business back with coffee shops, thrift stores, art galleries, community spaces, and, eventually, a distillery opening in the area. For now, some of that revitalization has been put on hold. Malone says, “I can’t do anything until the city of Jackson does what they have to do.” 

Copper distillation

Not everything about Jackson water is bad, or at least not bad for business. Matthew McLaughlin, co-founder of Fertile Ground Brewing Company, acknowledges that certain mineral aspects of Jackson’s Yazoo clay water are actually good for the fermenting process in brewing. The brewery, of course, still filters all of their water through state-of-the-art-systems. 

The crisis is also a business opportunity for some. Filtration systems, for both homes and businesses, are expensive but increasingly common. Bottled water, too, fills the living rooms of many Jacksonian families. In this regard, the crisis is not bad for all beverage businesses. 

Having access to clean drinking water is a fundamental utility that more and more modern American cities are failing to provide. The faults in these systems, whether they be lead pipes, low pressure, or the presence of bacteria, affect every aspect of life in the cities. The daily drinking of residents is informed by a water crisis, but so is the industrial and service sector, who aim to provide clean, tasty, and refreshing beverages to the public. 

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