Social Media Rumors Cause Water Outage in Jackson, Mississippi

Law enforcement investigates as misinformation campaign leads to significant drop in water pressure amid cold snap.

Law enforcement agencies are investigating whether social media rumors about a potential water outage prompted people to quickly fill bathtubs with tap water in Mississippi’s capital during a cold snap, causing a drop in pressure that temporarily made faucets run dry for thousands of customers on the city’s long-troubled system.
JXN Water, the private corporation that has been under a federal order to run Jackson’s system since late 2022, said a “deliberate misinformation campaign” was partially to blame.
Taps ran dry Wednesday and Thursday for almost a quarter of Jackson’s 52,000 water customers as icy conditions strained local infrastructure.
Maintenance crews had restored water to all but about 1,000 customers by Friday.
The latest disruption in Jackson water service came a week after Mississippi health officials issued and then quickly lifted a health advisory after tests identified E. coli in the water supplies of Jackson and a suburb.