waterTALENT supported the City of Jackson Mississippi with emergency water plant workers when flooding shut down the main water treatment plant, leaving over a hundred thousand people without safe drinking water. 

In the picture the waterTALENT team that supported the City of Jackson at the O.B. Curtis Water Plant in Ridgeland, Miss., on Sept. 1, 2022. 

JACKSON, Miss (AP) — Local officials in Mississippi’s capital city, where a late summer water crisis upended life for 150,00 people, have approved an emergency plan to increase staffing at the city’s two water treatment plants.

Jackson city council members voted Thursday to hire contract workers from waterTALENT to staff the O.B. Curtis and J.H. Fewell water treatment plants, tanks and well facilities. Under the agreement, waterTALENT will provide the city with four skilled water operators to help beef up paltry staffing at the two treatment facilities.

Jackson currently has two operators licensed at the Class A level, who have a degree of technical expertise that can take years to acquire. City leaders said that the two operators have been working more than 80 hours a week to produce clean water at the plants.

“We’re still relying on the same operators who are working long, long, long hours and long shifts,” said Ted Henifin, a consultant working with the city council. “So, we identified this company, and they recruit these folks and have them on standby, essentially licensed operators, that are willing to deploy for some emergency periods, and we’ve gotten a proposal from them.”