Nick Judin has lived in Jackson, Mississippi, for nearly his whole life.

So since forever, he's known the rule of thumb around here.

Don't trust the water.

What comes out of the tap is likely to have lead in it.

And when the power goes out, the water is likely to shut off too.

I've been drinking the water in Jackson for parts of my life. These days, I tend to use bottled water.

It's that bad? Yeah, I mean, it's never been like this. This is definitely new.

When Nick says it's never been like this, what he means is that for the last month or so,

thousands of Jackson residents simply haven't had water, not safe water, not reliable water. After winter storms knocked out

electricity here, same way they did throughout the South, it wreaked havoc. And in Jackson,

the havoc lasted for weeks. I think pretty much everyone in Jackson, Mississippi, knows,

when there's a freeze coming, fill up your tub.

And that's really just in case. And I don't think even a tub would have been enough for

these two freezes and what they did to the water system as a whole. But this is something

that we do live with.

Nick's a reporter now, works at the Mississippi Free Press. He spent a lot of time talking to his neighbors about how they've been getting by. Says during this water crisis,

he found there were two kinds of people. First, there were people like him, people whose lives were disrupted.

To be disrupted is to have every part of your life get just a little bit harder, a little bit more expensive, a little bit more humiliating, a little bit more painful. I've got to go buy water for every little task. I got to drop serious

extra cash on gas to travel out of the city to buy food to get a hotel just so my kids can take

a shower at night. Every one of those little moments, the stink of not showering or the feeling

of toilet water

splashing on you when you try to flush, watching your paycheck get eaten up by all these

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