Unsafe water challenges Jackson, Miss., restaurant owners, who must look elsewhere

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/03/ [login to see] /unsafe-water-challenges-jackson-miss-restaurant-owners-who-must-look-elsewhere
eZra Brown, owner of Soulé Coffee and Bubble Tea, starts his day differently than most other restaurant operators in the nation — traveling to neighboring cities for water and ice to serve his customers.

When Brown opened his cafe less than a month ago in Jackson, Miss., the city was entering the third week of a boil-water notice because of low pressure at the O.B. Curtis Water Plant. Then flooding at the Pearl River in early August caused the plant's pumps to fail.

Officials don't know when the health alert will end.

"If you have a boil alert, we have to get our ice from another city," Brown said. "We're rolling through 100 plus pounds of ice every single day. One-hundred-plus pounds, not including water. If you want a lemonade, if you want a green tea, that's all bottled water that we have to have.

More than 40 Jackson restaurant owners wrote a letter to Mississippi's governor and Jackson's mayor in early August, telling them that the repeated boil water orders and outages were costing them hundreds of dollars a day.