2021-08-29 | ANONYMOUS

NHS document shows GP’s to be paid an additional £10 for every child they inject with a Covid-19 Vaccine on top of the £12.58 already received – & Goo...

The Pfizer mRNA Covid-19 injection is now being given to children over the age of 12 who are classed as vulnerable or live with others classed as vulnerable, and a Daily Expose Investigation can reveal that all GP’s are to be paid £22.58 for every dose given to a child as an incentive, the search engine Google is trying to hide it, and the NHS is advising vaccinators that parental consent is not required.
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On the 3rd September 2021 the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-advice-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-aged-12-to-15">Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) announced</a> they were not recommending the Pfizer Covid-19 injection be offered to all children over the age of 12. However, they did announce that even more children would be eligible by extending the list of underlying conditions that put children into the vulnerable category.
Of course there was cause for celebration with the announcement that an experimental injection would not be given to the children of the United Kingdom, but the celebrations were short lived because instead of flat our refusing to recommend the jab the JCVI instead <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chief-medical-officers-to-consider-vaccinating-people-aged-12-to-15-following-jcvi-advice">passed the buck to the four Chief Medical Officer’s (CMO’s) of the United Kingdom</a>, meaning the fate of the nations children now lies firmly in the hands of Professor Chris Whitty and his colleagues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Government also <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/letter-from-uk-health-ministers-to-uk-cmos-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-12-to-15-year-olds">sent a letter the four CMO’s</a> upon the JCVI’s announcement instructing them to review the JCVI’s decision with immediate effect, showing how desperate they really are to give an experimental injection that does not prevent infection or transmission to children.
So desperate in fact that the Health Secretary Sajid Javid has already instructed the NHS to prepare for vaccinating children. One has to question why they are so desperate when the <a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/09/01/exclusive-covid-19-deaths-are-rapidly-rising-but-less-than-25-of-them-are-unvaccinated-people-its-time-to-admit-the-jab-doesnt-work-stop-injecting-kids-and-get-back-to-normal/">latest Public Health data</a> shows that 75% of Covid-19 deaths in the summer third wave consist of people who were vaccinated, and shows that the jabs seem to be increasing the risk of hospitalisation and death significantly, rather than reducing it by the claimed 95%.
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The answer of course can only be one that is sinister.
However, we can exclusively reveal that GP’s are essentially being bribed to vaccinate children via financial incentives, and it can all be found in an official NHS document.
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It may surprise you to know that GP’s were already being incentivised to inject the adult population with an experimental Covid-19 treatment – that <a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/09/02/uk-government-release-31st-report-on-adverse-reactions-to-the-covid-19-vaccines/">has caused at least 1.1 million adverse reaction and 1.6k deaths</a> – with a payment of £12.58 for every dose administered.
Well it seems that kind of money isn’t enough of an incentive to inject children with the same experimental Covid-19 treatment because the NHS have told GP’s that they are entitled to an additional payment of £10 on top of the £12.58 they are already entitled to – just see point No.14 of this official NHS document entitled ‘Vaccinating children and young people’ found <a href="https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2021/08/C1384-Vaccinating-children-and-young-people-frequently-asked-questions.pdf">here</a>.
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According to the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/">last count made in 2020 there are approximately 3,154,459 children</a> between the ages of 12 and 15 in the United Kingdom. Therefore when Chris Whitty and his colleagues decide to put further blood on their hands by recommending all children over the age of 12 are given the experimental injection, GP’s across the UK could stand to make a combined £142.45 million.
Any guesses for where that money comes from? The tax you pay on your hard earned income. So therefore you will be paying GP’s to administer an experimental injection to children over the age of 12 who do not need it because less than 9 children have died in the United Kingdom since March 2020 with Covid-19, and every single one had extremely serious debilitating pre-existing conditions.
But it get’s better, because the search engine giant, and the king of censorship Google don’t want you to know about it. Just type <a href="https://www.google.com/search?is+there+a+financial+supplement+for+vaccinating+12+-+15+">‘is there a financial supplement for vaccinating 12 – 15’</a> into Google and the top result takes you the very NHS document that proves there is. But just take a look at the answer they’ve provide in the search result – ‘No’.
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But your outrage shouldn’t end there because the NHS document also reveals that NHS bosses are telling vaccinators they do not require parental consent to administer an experimental Covid-19 injection to children.
Point No.5 of <a href="https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2021/08/C1384-Vaccinating-children-and-young-people-frequently-asked-questions.pdf">the document</a> states that “appropriate consent must be obtained in all cases. For 12 – 15 year-olds, this would be parental consent or the child’s own consent were they have been assessed as competent to consent to vaccination.
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This is known as <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/">Gillick competent</a> and it applies to under 16’s who are believed to have enough intelligence, competence and understanding to fully appreciate what’s involved in their treatment.
This should never be applied because as we know even adults are not able to understand and fully appreciate what’s involved in their treatment because the NHS refuse to tell them. How many young males who have received the Covid-19 injection have been told <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting#analysis-of-data">they are at serious risk of developing myocarditis</a> (inflammation of the heart muscle) or pericarditis (inflammation of the protective sacs around the heart) if they have the Pfizer or Moderna jab? Next to none.
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<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img alt="" class="wp-image-15332" data-attachment-id="15332" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="image-44" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?fit=639%2C200&ssl=1" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?fit=300%2C94&ssl=1" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?fit=1587%2C498&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1587,498" data-permalink="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/09/04/gps-to-be-paid-22-pound-for-every-child-they-inject-with-a-covid-19-vaccine/image-44-10/" data-recalc-dims="1" height="201" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, 639px" src="https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?resize=639%2C201&ssl=1" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?resize=1024%2C321&ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?resize=300%2C94&ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?resize=768%2C241&ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?resize=1536%2C482&ssl=1 1536w, https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?resize=1200%2C377&ssl=1 1200w, https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?w=1587&ssl=1 1587w, https://i1.wp.com/dailyexpose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/image-44.png?w=1278&ssl=1 1278w" width="639" /></figure>
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<a href="https://www.myocarditisfoundation.org/about-myocarditis/">Myocarditis</a> was so rare prior to the roll-out of the experimental Covid-19 vaccines that we imagine the majority of the population had never heard of it. The inflammation it causes enlarges and weakens the heart, creates scar tissue and forces it to work harder to circulate blood and oxygen throughout the body. Ongoing cardiovascular medication or even a heart transplant may be needed, yet the mainstream media are busy telling the public that it isn’t a serious condition and there is nothing to worry about.
Now, Chris Whitty holds the fate of your children in his hands, and when he decides to recommend all children are given an experimental Covid-19 injection, which he will, we will no doubt see a further epidemic of “short illnesses” / coincidences which we are already seeing across young adults who have suddenly died, a wave of heart issues for generations to come, and GP’s who are laughing all the way to the bank with £142 million of your hard earned money.
Make no mistake, children will die if this Government gets their way. 
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<h3 class="jp-relatedposts-headline">Related</h3>
 
 
source <a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/09/04/gps-to-be-paid-22-pound-for-every-child-they-inject-with-a-covid-19-vaccine/">https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/09/04/gps-to-be-paid-22-pound-for-every-child-they-inject-with-a-covid-19-vaccine/</a>

revolution NHS document shows GP’s to be paid an additional £10 for every child they inject with a Covid-19 Vaccine on top of the £12.58 already received – & Goo...

The Pfizer mRNA Covid-19 injection is now being given to children over the age of 12 who are classed as vulnerable or live with others class...

We’ve been radically underestimating the true cost of our carbon footprint

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More than a dozen Republican-led states are suing President Joe Biden over a number: 51.
Back in January, Biden signed an executive order that tasked a working group with determining a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17897614/climate-change-social-cost-carbon">social cost of carbon</a> (SCC) — a measure, in dollars, of how much economic damage results from emitting 1 ton of carbon dioxide. For now, the working group decided to go with $51 per ton, the same SCC the Obama administration used, until it can study the matter in depth and release its final determination early next year.
Being able to discuss the damage in terms of a precise dollar amount is important because it allows scientists and policymakers to show when the benefits of averting global warming are greater than the costs. At some point it just becomes cheaper to switch to sustainable systems rather than coping with all the wildfires, floods, droughts, and heat waves that result from unsustainable systems.
The SCC has underpinned a lot of US climate policy for years. But new data is always coming to light, which means successive administrations have had to redetermine a social cost of carbon that’s updated to the latest science. That’s where things get tricky.
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Although the Obama administration had set the SCC at $51 per ton, the Trump administration put it as low as $1, in part because of a decision to factor in only domestic, not global, impacts of emissions.
Compared to $1, the $51 price tag the Biden administration reverted to is high — and the coalitions of red states that have brought lawsuits against Biden, one in Missouri and another in Louisiana, are not happy with it. (A federal judge just <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/judge-scraps-red-state-lawsuit-over-biden-carbon-metric/">scrapped the suit filed in Missouri</a>, but the red states plan to appeal; the Louisiana suit is still pending.)
But according to some top environmental economists, we have good reason to believe the true cost of emitting carbon is actually a lot higher than that price tag suggests.
There are a couple of reasons for that. First, until now, the economists who calculated the SCC had barely factored in one of the biggest harms that climate change can cause: human mortality. Second, the way the SCC had been calculated rested on a problematic premise: that damage in the future counts for significantly less than damage in the present.
Let’s look at each of these issues in turn to understand why some experts now say the true cost of carbon per ton should really be much, much higher than we’d thought. In addition to having major policy implications, this discussion has major moral implications: It goes to the heart of our ethical responsibility to care for future generations.
Summer 2021’s record-shattering temperatures, which led to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/01/heat-wave-deaths-pacific-northwest/">hundreds of deaths</a> in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, made it painfully obvious that climate change isn’t a far-off threat — it’s already killing people.
So you might think that the SCC would also include a decent estimate as to the number of climate-related deaths per ton. But due to a lack of reliable data, it didn’t. There was no centralized data source enabling scientists to access daily temperature-related mortality figures for each country, so deaths barely factored into the calculation.
Danny Bressler, a PhD candidate in sustainable development at Columbia University, recently published <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24487-w">a study</a> in the journal Nature Communications that attempts to rectify that shortcoming. His paper updates the SCC based on findings that have emerged in the last few years about heat-related deaths.
When Bressler factored in the projected deaths — what he calls “the mortality cost of carbon” — the SCC jumped to a whopping $258 per ton.
To break that down a bit: Bressler found that adding 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would result in one heat-related death this century. That’s equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans.
People in other nations emit much less. For example, it would take the combined lifetime emissions of 146.2 Nigerians to kill one person.
This highlights one of the injustices of climate change. On a per-capita basis, people in richer, cooler countries produce far more emissions than people in poorer, hotter countries who suffer most of the damage.
It’s important to emphasize that Bressler’s estimate is only taking into account temperature-related mortality. (That means the net effect of having more hot days and fewer cold days.) But we know there are a lot of other climate-related events that can lead to death, including flooding, crop failures, disease transmission, and wars. Bressler told me he couldn’t factor them in due to a lack of rigorous data.
“But if you add in those other pathways,” Bressler said, “yeah, that would probably make the number go up.”
At this point, you might be wondering where, exactly, these sorts of numbers come from.
In the early ’90s, American economist William Nordhaus first figured out how to attach a price tag to the damage caused by 1 ton of carbon dioxide, a contribution deemed so valuable that he won a Nobel Prize for it. His model was dubbed the “Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy,” or DICE (to emphasize that we’re playing dice with the planet’s future).
Bressler used Nordhaus’s original DICE model to calculate the SCC. He left all the parameters the same but added in the mortality costs of carbon, which the original model didn’t properly incorporate. That’s what made the SCC jump to $258.
Some experts say that number <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/climate/carbon-emissions-death.html">might be too high</a>. But even if it’s somewhere in the right ballpark, that means it’s extremely worthwhile — not only morally but also in purely economic terms — to reduce emissions fast. More specifically, the main policy implication of the revamped model is that we should commit to full decarbonization by 2050. Note that while your choices as an individual factor into this, we can make a much greater impact by focusing on what governments and businesses do. “If you want to make as large-scale change as possible, do things at the level of policy or the level of business,” Bressler said.
If we fully decarbonize by 2050 rather than letting emissions grow in line with Nordhaus’s baseline scenario (which sees our emissions plateau close to the end of the century), we could bring down the expected number of heat-related deaths this century from 83 million to 9 million, according to Bressler. In other words, we could save 74 million lives. That’s roughly the number of people who died in <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history">World War II</a>, the deadliest conflict in history.
Unless you’ve studied economics, you may have never heard about discount rates. But it’s a key idea to wrap your head around, so let’s go ahead and unpack it.
The basic idea behind discount rates is that future damages or benefits are worth less than those in the present. That might sound unintuitive, but we all use discounting, whether we realize it or not.
For example, think about the value of getting $100 today versus the value of getting $100 next year. It’s common sense that if I give you $100 today, that’s better for you because you can invest it and potentially earn a nice return by next year.
If instead I gave you $100 next year, the relative value of that gift would be “discounted.” But by how much? That depends on market realities like interest rates. Let’s say the market dictates that there’s a discount rate of 3 percent per year. That means what I give you a year from now is worth only 97 percent of what I give you this year. And the picture gets worse and worse with each passing year, since any earnings would have compounded over time if you’d been able to invest earlier.
When environmental economists talk about discounting, they’re typically operating with the underlying assumption that society is likely to be richer in the future, assuming the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020">pattern of the past couple of centuries</a> continues. So a benefit worth $100 is going to be worth less to us in the future than today. Likewise, $100 worth of damage from climate change will matter less to us.
But how much less? Economists disagree vehemently on the answer.
Nordhaus, the Nobel winner who created the DICE model, was a proponent of using a 3 percent discount rate. British economist Nicholas Stern argued in his famed 2006 <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/the-economics-of-climate-change-the-stern-review/">Stern Review</a> for using a lower discount rate of 1.4 percent, which would lead to a higher SCC.
To understand their disagreement, consider that there are two main reasons to discount the future. The first is the reason we just covered: An extra dollar is worth less to a wealthy person than to a poorer person, and the assumption is that future people will be wealthier. Nordhaus and Stern wouldn’t disagree about that.
But the second reason for discounting is more contentious. It has to do with the fact that people tend to value the future less than the present. In wonky terms, this is called the “rate of pure time preference.”
As Bressler explained, “Nordhaus would say people are naturally myopic — they naturally discount the future relative to today — and it’s not up to us as economists to tell people what to think. Whereas Stern would say, ‘Well, we need to consider all the generations in our economic analysis, not just the present one, and we shouldn’t discount the future just because it’s in the future.’”
This argument gets at a core problem of climate advocacy: It’s hard enough to get people to invest in their own future, and persuading them to highly value future generations who can’t advocate for themselves is even harder. But because Stern thought it wrong to implicitly discriminate against the future generations who will bear the brunt of our emissions, he put less value on the rate of pure time preference, and as a result came up with a lower discount rate.
Interestingly, what Bressler’s study shows is that even when we assume Nordhaus’s higher discount rate and just add in the mortality impacts, we still get a big increase in the social cost of carbon.
And what happens to the SCC if we try using Stern’s lower discount rate?
“Oh, it goes way up,” Bressler told me. “Way, way up. It goes into the thousands of dollars.”
Laurie Johnson, former chief economist of the Natural Resources Defense Council and now executive director at the Climate Cost Project, didn’t bat an eye at the idea of a social cost of carbon in the thousands. She told me that’s a reasonable number per ton.
“People are suffering and dying, and more people will be suffering and dying,” she said, emphasizing that Bressler’s mortality estimates account for only a small fraction of the deaths we’ll see.
Other experts likewise <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/12/8/9869918/economists-climate-consensus">believe</a> the US has been using an overly high discount rate and thus underestimating the SCC. Economists Tamma Carleton and Michael Greenstone, for example, argued in <a href="https://legacy-assets.eenews.net/open_files/assets/2021/01/14/document_cw_01.pdf">a paper published in January</a> that the discount rate should be no higher than 2 percent. When they plugged in that rate, it resulted in a SCC of $125.
Carleton said the need for a lower discount rate is justifiable on purely economic grounds. “As you might have noticed if you’ve tried to buy a house recently (among lots of other things), interest rates look very different. Capital markets have changed, and interest rates are lower,” she told me.
But there are also very strong ethical reasons to think the discount rate used to date is much too high.
People do tend to value the present more than the future. You may grab for that chocolate chip cookie today, for instance, even though you know it means you’ll have to lean into the diet extra hard tomorrow. But that doesn’t necessarily mean our climate models should follow suit. In fact, some philosophers think baking in people’s rate of pure time preference is a terrible idea.
“We’re basically just measuring a form of human impatience and irrationality, then trying to add it into political decision-making,” Toby Ord, a senior research fellow at the <a href="https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/">Future of Humanity Institute</a> at Oxford University, <a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/why-the-long-run-future-matters-more-than-anything-else-and-what-we-should-do-about-it/">argued</a> on the 80,000 Hours podcast in 2017. “It doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing that one should be respecting at all. It’s just like finding a cognitive bias that we have, and then adding it back into your economic analysis in order to make your analysis biased in the same way.”
One classic reason individuals undervalue future events is because there’s a chance they’ll no longer be alive when those events happen, so they won’t be affected. That might make sense when it comes to individual choices, like eating a bunch of chocolate chip cookies. But in the case of climate change, respecting that bias means accepting that future generations will face centuries of climate disaster because of the choices we’ve made (and continue to make).
There’s an implicit intergenerational trade-off here. And although there’s no philosophical consensus about the right way to handle such trade-offs, many philosophers think we have a moral responsibility to care for future generations.
Frank Partnoy, now a Berkeley Law professor, <a href="https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/the-social-cost-of-carbon-how-to-do-the-math/">argued this point</a> in a 2012 interview with the New York Times. “A human life is often estimated to be worth around $10 million,” he said. “But if you apply a 3 percent discount rate to this, that means that a human life 500 years from now is only worth $3.81 today.”
Most people would agree that seems ridiculous. Philosopher Derek Parfit and economist Tyler Cowen underscored the absurdity of a social discount rate in a 1992 paper, <a href="https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/27957/original/Cowen___Parfit_-_Against_the_social_discount_rate.pdf?1523454279">writing</a>: “Why should costs and benefits receive less weight, simply because they are further in the future? When the future comes, these benefits and costs will be no less real. Imagine finding out that you, having just reached your twenty-first birthday, must soon die of cancer because one evening Cleopatra wanted an extra helping of dessert. How could this be justified?”
Now, that’s not to say the pure rate of time preference should be absolutely zero. As Carleton and Greenstone <a href="https://legacy-assets.eenews.net/open_files/assets/2021/01/14/document_cw_01.pdf">wrote</a>, “Perhaps the most compelling explanation for a nonzero pure rate of time preference is the possibility of a disaster (e.g., asteroids or nuclear war) that wipes out the population at some point in the future, thus removing the value of any events that happen afterwards.” Ord has made the same argument, <a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/why-the-long-run-future-matters-more-than-anything-else-and-what-we-should-do-about-it/#transcript">suggesting</a> we should discount the future by the extinction risk to humanity, and no more.
Whatever you think about discounting, intellectual honesty requires us to admit that how we choose to answer the question of what we owe to future generations gets baked into the discount rate and thus into the SCC. And any answer to that question will be a subjective moral judgment, not some objective mathematical truth.
“Ultimately, we can’t rely on only numbers — we have to make really hard value judgments,” Partnoy told the New York Times. “We should stop pretending this is a science and admit it is an art and talk about this in terms of ethics and fairness, not what we can observe in the markets.”
The Climate Cost Project’s Johnson agrees. “Some economists like to do a lot of smoke and mirrors and pretend that everything is objective and not based on values,” she said. “But it is based on values.”
She pointed out that even the first purely economic reason to discount the future (society will be wealthier in the future, and damages matter less the wealthier you are) is not some objective truth. She doesn’t take it for granted that economic growth will continue, since climate change could hamper or even reverse it. But many economists, she said, have an “irrational love affair” with the idea of ongoing economic growth.
“There’s a blind spot there among some economists — they really think growth can just continue like this,” Johnson said. “But it’s a delusion.”
Because Johnson thinks the first and second reasons to discount the future are deeply flawed, she does not think it makes sense to continue talking in terms of a social cost of carbon. Instead, she said we should simply set an emissions target and then determine the most cost-effective ways of reaching it.
She’s not alone. Even Stern, one of the main economists to shape the idea of the SCC, advocated for the same shift in a February ClimateWire <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/seriously-flawed-experts-clash-over-social-cost-of-carbon/">report</a> he co-authored with Nobel laureate and Columbia professor Joseph Stiglitz.
Realistically, though, the Biden administration will almost certainly set a social cost of carbon, as it’s promised to do so by early next year. The experts I spoke with expect the new SCC to factor in the latest empirical data. That includes what we now know about the mortality cost of carbon as well as data on what the market is doing; as Carleton noted, interest rates have dropped, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see that reflected in a lower discount rate — and thus a higher SCC.
The Biden administration may well follow <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24651/valuing-climate-damages-updating-estimation-of-the-social-cost-of">the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s general guidance</a> on how to determine the SCC. One important aspect of those recommendations is that they “put uncertainty center stage,” Carleton said, meaning they “price in the uncertainty we face about future economic growth — and hence future discount rates.”
This careful treatment of uncertainty would go some way toward accounting for Johnson’s objection that economic growth may not continue in the era of climate change. However, “I think the discussion still needs to be honest about what the real ethics are,” Johnson said. “You can’t reduce this problem to a mathematical equation.”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22643358/social-cost-of-carbon-mortality-biden-discounting">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22643358/social-cost-of-carbon-mortality-biden-discounting</a>

vox We’ve been radically underestimating the true cost of our carbon footprint

More than a dozen Republican-led states are suing President Joe Biden over a number: 51. Back in January, Biden signed an executive order ...

Millions of Americans don’t have drinkable water. Can the infrastructure bill fix that?

Laurie Bertram Roberts has been drinking bottled water for years.
Often, the tap water where she lives is questionable, she says. And sometimes, it’s straight-up brown.
A longtime resident of Jackson, Mississippi, Bertram Roberts has dealt with the city’s water issues since she was a college student. In her time there, century-old pipes in Jackson have meant numerous water main breaks, recurring boil water notices, and constant anxiety about water quality for many of its residents.
To cope, Bertram Roberts and her family rely on 5-gallon jugs of bottled water for drinking and cooking, and filtered water for showers and baths.
“I’ve lost track of the number of boil water notices we’ve had,” says Bertram Roberts, executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund, an abortion rights group.
Jackson’s problems — which have long affected the southern and western parts of the city — came to a head this past winter when an unexpected cold snap caused pipes to freeze and burst, leaving <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/month-without-water-jackson-mississippi-struggling-residents-fear-next-outage-n1261016">roughly 40,000 residents</a> without any water for <a href="http://wjtv.com/news/legislative-leaders-kill-key-proposal-to-address-jackson-water-crisis/">more than two weeks</a>. In the interim, residents used <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/02/us/jackson-mississippi-water-crisis-trnd/index.html">disinfectant to wash their dishes</a>, snow to flush their toilets, and <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/jackson-water-crisis-costs">baby wipes to keep themselves clean</a>. Local organizers, meanwhile, rallied to bring in pallets of bottled water, which frequently sold out in nearby stores.
“It was crazy,” says Morris Mock, a board member for the grassroots organization Mississippi Rising Coalition. “You had mud, [or] whatever gunk, coming out of the faucets.”
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<figcaption>A water distribution line in Jackson. The February water shutdown — which lasted nearly a month for some residents — was the longest the city has ever seen, and followed similar lapses in 1989, 1994, 2010, 2014 and 2018.</figcaption>
<cite>Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</cite></figure>
Jackson, a majority-Black city, is among a number of places across the country struggling with aging infrastructure and water access, problems which have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color. As <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2021/0721/First-Flint-then-Jackson.-Is-America-ready-to-fix-its-water-supply">the Christian Science Monitor reported,</a> a 2019 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that “drinking water systems that constantly violated federal safety standards were 40% more likely to occur in places with higher percentages of residents of color.”
Now city officials are pinning their hopes on Congress’s infrastructure plan. The <a href="https://www.vox.com/22598883/infrastructure-deal-bipartisan-bill-biden-manchin">$1 trillion bipartisan proposal</a>, which passed the Senate on August 10 and is waiting on a vote in the House, includes about <a href="http://uswateralliance.org/resources/blog/bipartisan-infrastructure-package-achieves-historic-investments-more-needed">$48 billion in new spending</a> for drinking water and wastewater projects. It wouldn’t necessarily solve all the city’s challenges — Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba estimates that repairs and maintenance could <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2021/03/26/in-jackson-miss-a-water-crisis-has-revealed-the-racial-costs-of-legacy-infrastructure/">cost as much as $2 billion</a> — but it could provide a boost that’s been needed for years.
Whether the money has that effect, however, will depend heavily on if the funding in the bill actually winds up making it to the city.
Many cities are navigating declining water infrastructure, from pipes in <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/1-trillion-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-heres-how-georgia-could-benefit/3KZQ4GJXSBHQVMYPJPHX7UTLXQ/">Atlanta</a> that haven’t been replaced for decades to lead service lines in <a href="https://www.wbez.org/stories/despite-a-promise-chicago-has-made-no-progress-on-removal-of-lead-pipes/02644e18-4cd5-4e7e-b595-3ebc111c62a6">Chicago</a> leeching contaminants into the water.
Jackson’s recent water outage, while it marks one of the most extreme and high-profile failures of the US’s water systems, is indicative of this broader problem. The February shutdown — <a href="https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/03/26/the-jackson-mississippi-water-crisis-and-americas-crumbling-water-system">which lasted nearly a month for some residents</a> — was the longest the city has ever seen, but it followed <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/24/why-jacksons-water-system-is-broken/">similar lapses in 1989, 1994, 2010, 2014 and 2018</a>.
Much like other places, the issue Jackson’s facing has long been the same: Its infrastructure is simply too old.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630764039_9878_499643" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22820509,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UtQhiZtFlgvPEiz2x7F3uoFftx0=/0x0:8192x5464/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/G-pstnkibwzNjBVKWSDrEvx3ScM=/0x0:8192x5464/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OHyIAs-uSxBnutK7rt9rASnrlTk=/0x0:8192x5464/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Yfw8m1MDm073plnkBtO-gy2iCLw=/0x0:8192x5464/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a5IIBGg2FIvR2VBPcaSQLI1KeOY=/0x0:8192x5464/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3utKZ68HU1YxjNm3h3kP95ZKTDU=/0x0:8192x5464/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SsWcX2GzsBhrfgeGut3Liv5o0rk=/0x0:8192x5464/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MRqEiVxAiLaqQE0Ezaihlki0R8g=/0x0:8192x5464/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9sL9aqXqoqsRRHgLKnTZwVPj9r8=/0x0:8192x5464/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="Jackson, Mississippi Struggles With Lack Of Water 3 Weeks After Winter Storms" data-upload-width="8192" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Cjx_PIgILp6TfLXVrFEsqkY6u8I=/0x0:8192x5464/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5bAeL4CMapdG7kmRXFJN0kENc2o=/0x0:8192x5464/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/isfSVOhtZFzhd0P4TSHktobKM4o=/0x0:8192x5464/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TwLzGSzTznFoGx7k8FLS4hWiScU=/0x0:8192x5464/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jMP7ERyb_kgmhraHfyJPgTfM3BE=/0x0:8192x5464/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JV0kgHO6DRAVp4UBB8YDXuLWD3U=/0x0:8192x5464/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_TSRqUTE41eKhSZzwVdzivcQ1cM=/0x0:8192x5464/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/g69mhgobSSqLRfeh6bG7ButT5jY=/0x0:8192x5464/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eEUfo1bdzENffNVjcVhe8P3gcDo=/0x0:8192x5464/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HecurTDIEa2_ZJgCF--hU-e5aro=/0x0:8192x5464/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:8192x5464):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820509/1306008628.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Workers in Jackson make repairs at the site of a water main break on East Pascagoula Street.</figcaption>
<cite>Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</cite></figure>
“In some areas, we’ve got 100-year pipes,” says Charles Williams, former head of the Jackson Public Works Department. “They’ve been in the ground for a very long time, and we’ve been patching the system due to lack of availability of funds.”
As a result, issues like water main breaks have become more common, contributing to stoppages in service and cracks that make it easier for contaminants to get into the water. Williams estimates that in the past year alone, there have been more than 100 water main breaks.
Equipment at the city’s water treatment facilities — including <a href="https://www.wlbt.com/2021/05/27/ob-curtis-could-be-operating-full-capacity-this-fall-public-works-director-says/">machines at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant</a>, which froze during February’s winter storm — are old too, causing further delays in making sure the water is clean and drinkable. Much of this equipment hasn’t been properly weatherized either, so it’s especially vulnerable during cold snaps.
“If you don’t make the critical upgrades and the desired maintenance, it’s going to break,” Williams says.
While the <a href="https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2021/may/12/epa-jackson-water-safe-drink-despite-system-proble/">EPA has deemed Jackson’s water safe to drink</a> as long as there isn’t a boil water notice, it’s also called for major repairs at its treatment facilities in order to better address potential contaminants. In 2015, annual water reports showed that lead levels in the city’s water were nearly 50 percent higher than the acceptable standard, <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/07/22/environmental-protection-agency-jackson-miss-water-issues/8056918002/">the Clarion Ledger reported</a>. Government analyses in June 2016 also found that more than a fifth of Jackson homes had water that exceeded the federal government’s “action” lead level, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/17/high-levels-lead-mississippi-water-flint-michigan">according to the Guardian</a>.
Earlier this year, city officials laid out a plan for increasing staffing at treatment plants and fixing machines there. The <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/06/30/councilmembers-study-epa-mayors-plan-fix-jacksons-water-system/7794448002/">estimated costs</a> include $70 million to address maintenance at two treatment plants and $100 million to repair the distribution system — though Williams notes that the full price tag of a water overhaul is likely to be much higher. (Lumumba’s <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2021/03/26/in-jackson-miss-a-water-crisis-has-revealed-the-racial-costs-of-legacy-infrastructure/">$2 billion estimate</a> for complete repairs to Jackson’s water and wastewater systems easily dwarfs the city’s <a href="https://www.wlbt.com/2021/03/02/jackson-seeking-sales-tax-hike-cover-water-sewer-needs/">annual $300 million budget</a>.)
One reason the city hasn’t been able to fix its water issues is that it just hasn’t had the funds to do so. Over time, the city has seen its population and tax base decrease, significantly reducing its revenues for utilities and other services, as <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2021/0721/First-Flint-then-Jackson.-Is-America-ready-to-fix-its-water-supply">the Christian Science Monitor explained</a>:
<blockquote>
As in other metro areas nationwide, school integration led to white flight, and in later decades other factors including rising crime rates fueled a further exodus to the suburbs among Jackson’s white and Black middle class alike.
With them, too, went a large portion of a tax base that Mississippi’s largest city has historically depended upon.
</blockquote>
Federal <a href="http://www.uswateralliance.org/sites/uswateralliance.org/files/publications/VOW%20Economic%20Paper_0.pdf">funding for water infrastructure has also sharply dipped</a> since the 1970s, forcing states and localities to try to cover these gaps. (According to <a href="http://www.uswateralliance.org/sites/uswateralliance.org/files/publications/The%20Economic%20Benefits%20of%20Investing%20in%20Water%20Infrastructure_final.pdf">the US Water Alliance</a>, federal funding accounted for 63 percent of capital spending on water infrastructure in 1977, a number that’s since dwindled to less than 10 percent.)
To raise more infrastructure funds, Jackson previously instituted a 1 percent hike to its sales tax in 2014, <a href="https://www.wlbt.com/2021/03/02/jackson-seeking-sales-tax-hike-cover-water-sewer-needs/">which brings in roughly $14 million a year</a>. It also <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/25/billions-will-flow-to-mississippi-from-rescue-act-where-will-it-go/">received $47 million as part of the American Rescue Plan</a> earlier in 2021, some of which is being allocated to water-related repairs. And state lawmakers granted Jackson <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/30/jackson-wanted-47-million-for-water-crisis-lawmakers-are-providing-3-million/">$3 million in funding</a> for water plant fixes.
These measures still aren’t enough to solve Jackson’s water problems, though. And given the funding shortages it’s experienced, the city has focused on using its limited water budget to stem the damage rather than fixing it wholesale.
More federal funding could be significant in helping the city address the overwhelming expenses it still has, if it’s properly targeted. ”This kind of package from the federal government is truly our only hope,” Jackson City Council President Virgi Lindsay <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/08/11/lumumba-biden-discuss-jackson-water-issues-virtual-meeting/5566452001/">said recently</a>.
Getting much-needed funding to Jackson will depend on how Mississippi ultimately chooses to dole out its infrastructure money.
The EPA manages two programs to send federal dollars to states to help fix their water systems: the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/dwsrf">Drinking Water State Revolving Fund</a> and the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/cwsrf">Clean Water State Revolving Fund</a>. But the amount they typically parcel out is small compared to the scope of needs in a city like Jackson. Under the Senate-passed infrastructure plan, much of the federal money for water systems would flow through those programs, which are administered by the states, rather than going directly to cities and municipalities in need.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630764039_9398_499644" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22820887,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KsexbJSfA5myJOmMPniitFc-ZXE=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/v5F-dHJkoNM_BE0MssaJGUT9Hk4=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3MHTKvKl68fJMGyqIyDpmPEpi8Y=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ez67Bx6A5iAktCMwmM1qtUB-Wac=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5vUgg9b4iFOhjVu1AXoef2Wvn7E=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-WNw3S7DTppxZocQhGb3_8vEf2U=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R2uED7zZuhBz2GaFnJlP3KLDZj4=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kHV0i5k3XMcTezgviUOF3A9Yzas=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3xnE6TPo5vTOvWRE24Be65Q8ZC4=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3000" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eQKz8DI_NQXt-CRFih9h6W5QMKg=/0x0:3000x2000/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TZpSBi_7DuF2jkxVCpTUsnZ4leQ=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ixAxmGap36ZUPWzrXkwBP38kUd0=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Wd5_1zhlJKBbY72Ahq6Nc6FdSts=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XPU-4oaWQT3PUNR19g0tsLQbTH4=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/I1SLwn2w1x-ANVeclalrapzYb8g=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jXZSvhbq2reyAD3dCpB4kdUJK3o=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/okOD7KX-yVDRp4XDhk9tpeS1gow=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hl6_OAXptDirk30xYRViFcl1mMM=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AqwyeqoewnT2hB23oCc6Bz3IBI8=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22820887/GettyImages_1306015415.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba addresses the city’s water problem during a press conference on March 8.</figcaption>
<cite>Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</cite></figure>
In 2021, the federal government sent $1.1 billion to states via the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/dwsrf/2017-2021-allotment-federal-funds-states-tribes-and-territories">Drinking Water State Revolving Fund</a> (DWSRF) and an additional $1.6 billion via the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/documents/2021_cwsrf_allotments.pdf">Clean Water State Revolving Fund</a> (CWSRF). Mississippi received about $26 million of those funds, which it is distributing to local governments in the form of loans and grants. (Because of how the state revolving funds are set up, they also include more money than the annual federal allocations places receive. In total, <a href="https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/44,0,127.html">Mississippi’s drinking water fund</a> has roughly <a href="https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/7992.pdf">$37 million to distribute in 2021</a>, for instance.)
According to <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi/articles/2021-07-22/jackson-reviews-water-system-staff-to-comply-with-epa-order">the Associated Press,</a> “Jackson has received almost $20 million over the past four years and is seeking an additional $27 million [in 2021]” from the DWSRF.
In the past, residents and organizers have raised concerns about whether Jackson’s water needs were getting adequate attention from the state government: During February’s water crisis, Mississippi officials moved slowly to <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/03/09/city-gives-update-water-shortage-distribution-sites/4641728001/">submit a disaster declaration</a> or offer additional aid to the majority-Black city.
And while Jackson received $47 million in federal stimulus funds from the American Rescue Plan, the state <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/30/jackson-wanted-47-million-for-water-crisis-lawmakers-are-providing-3-million/">approved only $3 million of another $47 million</a> in funding that the city had asked for to recover from its water emergency, a situation that has led some residents and activists to question if racial bias has been playing a role in some officials’ treatment of the city. Previously, the state legislature <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/30/jackson-wanted-47-million-for-water-crisis-lawmakers-are-providing-3-million/">sunk another proposal</a> for a sales tax increase to raise more infrastructure funds as well.
“If it was a majority-white city of the same size, I don’t think people would have drug their feet to come help,” Bertram Roberts says. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/30/jackson-wanted-47-million-for-water-crisis-lawmakers-are-providing-3-million/">Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann</a> has pointed to how much federal money the city was poised to receive when discussing the state’s decision to allocate just $3 million earlier this year.
Money from the DWSRF and CWSRF, meanwhile, is separate from the support Jackson got from the state and federal governments following its water emergency, and it’s allocated through state agencies.
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<figcaption>Charles Williams (not pictured), former head of the Jackson Public Works Department, estimates that in the past year alone, there have been more than 100 water main breaks.</figcaption>
<cite>Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</cite></figure>
According to data from the EPA’s Project Benefits Reporting System, which was shared with Vox by the Environmental Policy Innovation Center’s Katy Hansen, Jackson received about $20.2 million of $253.9 million in funds allocated via the DWSRF between 2010 and 2020, roughly 8 percent of the total pot of money. Jackson’s 170,000 residents also make up roughly 6 percent of the state’s total population of 3 million, though factors other than a city’s size, such as a place’s reliance on low-cost financing, contribute to need for these funds. (Data from the Mississippi Department of Health also showed that the initial loan awards for the city were $23.8 million between 2010-2020, in addition to an emergency loan it received of $467,000.)
Whether the money in the infrastructure bill will effectively be distributed to places in need like Jackson is an open question. Jim Craig, Mississippi’s Director of Health Protection, noted that state legislation would end up determining how the process would work, and added that officials have approved past loans to the city that have exceeded the $5 million maximum loan amount that had been set for the program.
A <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/report-racial-disparities-afflict-epa-drinking-water-funds/">report from the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC)</a> co-authored by Hansen, a senior water adviser at EPIC, previously looked at 10 states’ allocation of DWSRF money and found that several states struggled to deliver this aid equitably: Smaller localities and places with a higher proportion of people of color have historically received less money from the program both because they had less resources to pursue this funding and because much of it was dispensed as loans instead of grants. <a href="http://policyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/SRFs_Drinking-Water-Analysis.pdf">The study</a> did not include Mississippi, though Sri Vedachalam, EPIC’s director of water, noted that the dynamics of the report were likely to be relatively consistent across states.
“We see this pattern where money is given to certain types of communities while others struggle to secure that type of money,” says Vedachalam. Because states have significant control over where these funds go, the boost the bill provides doesn’t necessarily guarantee that Jackson would receive sufficient extra money.
The bipartisan infrastructure plan includes about $48 billion in new funds for water-related repairs. As <a href="http://uswateralliance.org/resources/blog/bipartisan-infrastructure-package-achieves-historic-investments-more-needed">detailed by the US Water Alliance</a>, there is $11.7 billion allocated to the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund over five years, $11.7 billion allocated to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund over five years, and $15 billion allocated to addressing lead service lines over five years that will be distributed via the Drinking Water Fund. There’s also an additional $10 billion total that focuses on emerging contaminants.
In all, Mississippi is expected to receive $429 million over five years for water infrastructure were Congress’s legislation to become law, <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/08/12/senate-infrastructure-bill-give-mississippi-billions/8108212002/">the Clarion Ledger reported</a>.
Although the federal government still gives states significant leeway to determine how Drinking Water Funds and Clean Water Funds are targeted, there are some provisions in the legislation that make it more accessible for “disadvantaged communities,” which are classified in Mississippi as having lower median income.
Nearly half of the funding for the Drinking Water Fund and the Clean Water Fund will be available as grants, which could mean that this money is more accessible to localities that can’t take on loans, including lower-income cities, for example. In the new bill, 49 percent of the new funds in both are available as principal forgiveness loans or grants. Additionally, the bipartisan bill would require that a larger proportion of the funding in the Drinking Water Fund be directed to disadvantaged communities.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630764039_1237_499646" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22806977,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/D1oZYsIUybk3GDgGI1z28EqUY5A=/0x0:817x547/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WuL7b-dLy6QtC0uVhZAfE4grlrc=/0x0:817x547/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_Cb-9CPIotymGlllF77iyCVNzZs=/0x0:817x547/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HkqW8ttZIYBYk8IpoyiUivydRKY=/0x0:817x547/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8J1eSgJ5tXo2CNXcjF5VcPmQxOI=/0x0:817x547/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/57PCUb6xVnL4ZuGxGE_UHycqtrY=/0x0:817x547/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NqjROyn-8HbE7P1S-DQIVSSkjmI=/0x0:817x547/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RjF7lU03wB0HzLNLkSk7dEIfaQw=/0x0:817x547/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/koz2kON-eJVNvRq5gVycdaDsiwE=/0x0:817x547/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="817" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5onNe6OQWn_uoIxHgtsN_fDpQ3Y=/0x0:817x547/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZdnC4EHcMCUcA46CKVKGsbXuHrA=/0x0:817x547/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2UFUARI2VmYRk0Dxmr8gDGDuwTs=/0x0:817x547/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/n6AnW_aC3XNjCVeEU9w638-wV1s=/0x0:817x547/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kwCwVGg58T6aq3z_212jB3NxhTo=/0x0:817x547/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ePCI_xTUl1ex7LsMgHXOk8wPTtc=/0x0:817x547/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O3XbwsNRP_Y_kcuTyt2gdVpTb3M=/0x0:817x547/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8Pkz2qK_oUO6_NmMoV7ij1IXdMg=/0x0:817x547/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tH3vqrV5BQJdvvKKYmv69GKbvVY=/0x0:817x547/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pNBwi3Y1j-lRGZcI3NyaNa8TXNQ=/0x0:817x547/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:817x547):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22806977/Screen_Shot_2021_08_26_at_11.37.54_AM.png 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>A US Water Alliance breakdown of the water funding in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.</figcaption>
<cite>US Water Alliance</cite></figure>
The amount of money in the bill — which includes more than $2 billion in spending on both the Clean Water and Drinking Water Funds each year, with an additional $3 billion focused on lead service lines annually — is huge, but far from enough to meet the enormity of the problem.
For replacement of lead service lines alone, for example, the NRDC estimates that costs <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/02/biden-lead-problem-502149">could be as much as $45 billion</a>, so the $15 billion in the bill only begins to address that problem. For water infrastructure more broadly, the costs are also expected to be quite a bit higher than the roughly $48 billion in new funds included in the bill, notes Scott Berry, director of policy and government affairs at the US Water Alliance.
States also still have pretty broad discretion in determining which projects to prioritize. For now, while Mississippi prioritizes projects on an array of criteria including compliance with drinking water regulations and a cost/benefit analysis, there’s relatively wide latitude in what that could entail. This prioritization, depending on how it’s applied, could leave Jackson without the funding it requires, with state officials instead directing federal funds to other water projects in the state.
Still, this would be one of the largest federal investments in water infrastructure in decades, and what policy experts see as a vital “down payment” on needed repairs.
“It is one of, if not the single largest investment in water infrastructure in 50 years,” Berry tells Vox. “That’s not nothing. Will it solve all of the country’s water infrastructure problems? Emphatically no.”
The consequences of failing to address this problem are dire.
Without access to clean water, Jackson residents are forced to seek out alternative water sources, while continuing to pay <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-jackson-mississippi-424195a903bbb2bb1cf57fa10cb1ed5d">sometimes exorbitant water bills</a>. It also means people are deprived of a resource that’s fundamental to their daily lives, a stark reality in a developed country like the US.
“It was definitely shocking to know that we didn’t have clean drinking water to cook with, to just take care of our families,” said Cassandra Welchlin, head of Mississippi’s Black Women’s Roundtable, of Jackson’s February water stoppage.
And even when access to water is secure, there’s a different set of worries that people encounter when drinking contaminated water. Lead in drinking water can lead to high blood pressure, brain damage, and kidney problems, for example. Multiple studies have found that the health care risks posed by lead contaminants may have serious effects for children’s growth and reproductive health as well.
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<figcaption>A water and food distribution site set up at the planetarium in Jackson, Mississippi, seen in March. There are still 2 million people in the US who don’t have access to clean running water.</figcaption>
<cite>Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</cite></figure>
According to the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/corinne-bell/californias-lead-problem-partials-arent-good-enough">NRDC</a>, as many as 20 million people are likely getting some of their water from lead pipes, along with others who are sourcing their water via very old equipment.
<a href="https://www.wesa.fm/development-transportation/2021-07-05/pwsa-says-its-replaced-half-of-pittsburghs-lead-service-lines-on-track-for-2026-goal">In 2016,</a> Pittsburgh detected high levels of lead in its water, spurring the city to begin replacing the thousands of lead service lines it still has. <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/article_4ab450da-b9c8-5a92-8355-04fc4cd3a8e8.html">In 2021</a>, New Orleans is still grappling with aging infrastructure and repairs to a water treatment facility that opened more than 100 years ago. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/two-years-after-newarks-water-crisis-the-city-has-cleaned-up-its-act">In 2019,</a> Newark also found elevated lead levels in its drinking water, pushing the city to replace its pipes with new copper ones.
Across the country, the scale of the issue is alarming: Per a <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/2-million-americans-dont-have-access-to-running-water-and-basic-plumbing-2019-11-20">report from the US Water Alliance</a>, there are still 2 million people in the United States who don’t have access to clean running water at all, a problem that disproportionately affects “low-income people in rural areas, people of color, tribal communities, [and] immigrants.” A 2018 study led by UC Irvine water economist Maura Allaire also found that “in any given year from 1982 to 2015, somewhere between 9 million and 45 million Americans got their drinking water from a source that was in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” <a href="https://www.science.org/news/2018/02/millions-americans-drink-potentially-unsafe-tap-water-how-does-your-county-stack">Science reported</a>.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill has the potential to funnel much-needed funds across the country, but precise implementation will be critical to ensure that different localities really benefit.
“I am hopeful that the federal infrastructure funding will address our needs. It absolutely has to,” says Welchlin. “We can’t afford to have another water crisis.”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22620076/jackson-mississippi-water-infrastructure-bill">https://www.vox.com/22620076/jackson-mississippi-water-infrastructure-bill</a>

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