Mississippi Today
How the Jackson garbage standoff impacts local environment
How the Jackson garbage standoff impacts local environment
Accumulating household waste continues to sit unbothered across the state’s largest city as local officials repeatedly fail to choose a garbage collector.
The city’s emergency contract with Richard’s Disposal, the company who the mayor and a minority of the city council are endorsing for a long-term contract, ended on April 1. Six days later, the state environmental department issued Jackson an official notice that the city was in violation of Mississippi pollution law.
The notice says that by not collecting garbage, “the City has caused wastes to be placed in locations where they are likely to cause pollution of the air and waters of the state,” violating state law, and opening Jackson up to $25,000 in fines for each day it doesn’t collect trash.
Jackson spokesperson Melissa Faith Payne said on Monday that, as far as she was aware, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality hasn’t yet levied any fines against the city. MDEQ spokesperson Jan Schaefer declined to comment on the agency’s enforcement.
While it’s unclear what punishments Jackson will face from MDEQ, the idle piles of garbage threaten local habitats as well as the creeks that flow through the city’s residential neighborhoods, a local conservation expert explained.

“When we do our cleanups, a lot of the trash that enters the (Pearl River) comes from our storm drains from our neighborhoods, not just Jackson, but from all our neighborhoods,” said Abby Braman, executive director of Pearl Riverkeeper.
During heavy rain events like Jackson saw last week, rainwater carries trash left on the street towards the city’s storm drains. The waste then either blocks storm water from getting into the drains, or it goes into the drains and flows out into the city’s creeks. Once that happens, Braman explained, the garbage not only goes into the wildlife habitat in the creeks and the Pearl River, but it also creates a flood risk for Jackson residents.
“We have, depending on where you count from, about 11 creeks that run straight through Jackson into the river. All of those run through neighborhoods” she said. “A lot of them, particularly Lynch Creek, that creek’s already clogged up with debris, including trash. It’s already overtopping its banks several times a year and causing a lot of problems in that community, and destruction of public and private property.”
Lynch Creek starts just past Interstate 220 in west Jackson, and runs south near Ellis Avenue and the Washington Addition neighborhood before meeting the Pearl River just below Interstate 20.
The section of the river near Jackson, as well as several of the city’s creeks, are under a contact advisory from MDEQ because of overflows from the city’s overwhelmed and depleted sewer system.
When residential garbage pickup will return to Jackson is up in the air.
On Monday, city council members were unable to vote on a new contract for Richard’s Disposal after the mayor pulled the item from the agenda, after learning that Richard’s was readying a lawsuit against Jackson. The company is arguing it won the city’s bidding process and that the city council has wrongly voted against awarding Richard’s the contract, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba explained.

Lumumba has argued for the last year that Richard’s deserves the contract. Through the blind bidding process, Richard’s received the best score for options that include twice-a-week pickup and a trash bin for residents. The company’s bid was also the cheapest of any offering twice-a-week pickup.
Opposing city council members have made a wide-range of arguments against the Richard’s option: They argue that the company is less experienced than the previous vendor, Waste Management, and also that Lumumba is trying to steer the council towards his preferred choice. They’ve also argued that the 96-gallon bins included in that option would be a nuisance for residents.
Despite the majority opposition to Richard’s, Lumumba has refused to present another contract for the council to vote on. The mayor argued that not picking the “winning” bid would open the city to a lawsuit, since the city is legally required to use the bidding process to pick its vendor.
On Monday, Lumumba said he was meeting with MDEQ on Wednesday to explain the city’s position. He also hinted at calling another council meeting this week to vote on an emergency contract for Richard’s to collect garbage in the interim while the dispute lingers on.
The city last week opened a site at the Metrocenter Mall for residents to bring garbage during limited hours. Officials have yet to announce any drop-off times for this week. Some wards have offered alternate sites to bring trash.
This most recent standoff over garbage pickup comes a month after Jackson officials launched its citywide cleanup campaign, called “Stop Trashing Jackson.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1848

Feb. 15, 1848

Sarah Roberts, a 5-year-old Black American, entered an all-white school in Boston, only to be turned away. She wound up entering four more white schools, and each time she was shown the door. And so she found herself walking from home, passing five all-white schools on the way to an all-black school the city of Boston was forcing her to attend.
This angered her father, Benjamin, one of the nation’s first Black American printers, and he sued the city. Robert Morris, one of the nation’s first Black lawyers, took up the case.
“Any child unlawfully excluded from public school shall recover damages therefore against the city or town by which such public instruction is supported,” Morris wrote.
He and co-counsel Charles Sumner argued that the Constitution of Massachusetts held all are equal before the law, regardless of race, and that the laws creating public schools made no distinctions.
Sumner wrote, “Prejudice is the child of ignorance … sure to prevail where people do not know each other.”
In 1850, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the racial segregation of public schools. The attorneys brought the issue to state lawmakers. In 1855, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned segregated schools — the first law barring segregated schools in the U.S.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
State, MS Power extend life of coal unit to energize data centers

Last week, the state Public Service Commission unanimously approved a special contract that will extend the life of a Mississippi Power coal unit in order to meet energy demands for a recently announced data center project in Meridian.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced last month a $10 billion investment from Compass Datacenters. The Dallas-based company will build eight centers, and in exchange will receive multiple tax exemptions, Mississippi Today reported. The project will be located within the Mississippi Power service area. The utility, a subsidiary of Southern Company, serves 192,000 customers in the southern and eastern parts of the state.
Following a 2020 directive from the PSC to get rid of excess generation capacity, Mississippi Power initially planned to close the two coal-powered units at Plant Victor J. Daniel — in Jackson County, about 10 miles north of Moss Point — by 2027. In 2023, though, the utility pushed the retirement date back a year in order to support demand needs for its sibling company, Georgia Power, Grist reported.
Then on Jan. 9, Mississippi Power informed the PSC that, in order to power the Compass Datacenter facilities, it would have to delay closure of at least one of the coal units, as well as “potentially other fossil steam units,” until the mid-2030s.
Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps told Mississippi Today that the PSC’s job is to meet demand, and that until Mississippi Power has the option to include nuclear power in its arsenal, “we’re going to need all the power we can get in that service area.”
“We can’t stop economic development because we’ve got to wait, you know, 15 years for some nuclear power in the service area,” Stamps said.

Throughout the last couple decades, the country has moved away from coal as an energy source because of its contribution to global warming but also because of air and water pollution associated with coal-burning facilities. A 2023 study from George Mason University, the University of Texas and Harvard University found that exposure to fine particulate pollutants known as PM2.5 from coal plants contributed to 460,000 deaths around the country between 1999 and 2020, twice the mortality rate of PM2.5 exposure from other sources.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, whose district includes Plant Daniel, called the facility a “fixture of our community” because of the jobs and tax revenue it provides. He said he wasn’t aware of any health concerns related to air emissions from the plant.
“I don’t hear from any constituents that say, ‘Hey, we don’t want this here,’” England said.
England added that Plant Daniel retiring units could potentially hurt its tax assessment, meaning less revenue for public needs like the local school district. He also pointed to emission “scrubbers” that Plant Daniel and other coal facilities have added in recent years. The same 2023 study found that scrubbers have dramatically decreased sulfur dioxide emissions as well as air pollution-related deaths.
In addition to Compass Datacenters, Mississippi Power also entered into a special contract to supply power for a plywood manufacturer, owned by Hood Industries, in Beaumont, Mississippi.
The two deals, a spokesperson for Mississippi Power said, necessitate keeping the coal and other units set for retirement alive.
“We are committed to keeping the Mississippi Public Service Commission and our customers up to date and will present additional details in our upcoming 2025 Mid-Point Supply-Side Update,” spokesperson Jeff Shepard said via email. “These incredible economic development projects will create a significant number of jobs and bring billions of dollars of investment to southeast Mississippi.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Legislation to license midwifery clears another hurdle

A bill that would establish a clear pathway for Mississippians seeking to become professional midwives passed the House after dying in committee several years in a row.
“Midwives play an important role in our state, especially in areas where maternal health care is scarce,” said Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus and author of the bill. “I’m happy that House Bill 927 passed the House yesterday and urge our senators to join us in passing this much-needed legislation.”
Despite the legislation imposing regulations on the profession and mandating formalized training, many midwives have voiced their support of the bill. They say it will help them care more holistically for women and allow them new privileges like the ability to administer certain labor medications – and will open the door to insurance reimbursement in the future.
“We have so few midwives integrated in the system and so few midwives practicing in the state,” explained Amanda Smith, a midwife in Hattiesburg who went out of state to receive her professional midwifery license. “We believe that licensure really will help create a clear pathway so people know exactly how to become a midwife in Mississippi.”
It isn’t guaranteed that the bill would make midwifery more accessible to low-income women. But licensure makes it more likely.
Currently, neither Medicaid nor private insurance reimburse for unlicensed midwifery services. Licensing professional midwifery wouldn’t necessarily mean that insurance companies would immediately start reimbursing for the services, but it’s the only way they might.
A new federal program is seeking to make midwifery reimbursable by Medicaid.
Mississippi is one of 15 states chosen by the federal government to participate in a new grant program called the Transforming Maternal Health Model, which began in January 2025 and will work to expand access and reimbursement for services – including licensed midwifery.
The bill has historically faced opposition both from those who think it does too much, as well as those who think it does too little.
To those who think it overregulates the profession, McLean says her loyalty lies with her constituents and making sure they have the most transparency when seeking birth options. Currently, anyone can operate under the title midwife in the state of Mississippi – with no required standard of training.
“We are legitimizing (professional midwifery) … As a legislator, it’s my duty to try to protect the citizens of Mississippi,” McLean said. “And by putting this legislation forward, it helps to inform those clients that would want the services of a midwife but don’t know how to choose.”
As for those who think it does too little, McLean says the bill would leave the details up to a board – established by the bill and made up mostly of midwives – who would be able to decide requirements for professional midwifery better than a room full of lawmakers.
“There’s a lot of men in here that know a lot about birthing babies,” McLean said during a lively floor debate Thursday.
The bill now advances to the Senate.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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