NPR.

This week more than 2 million people in Houston were without one of life's basic necessities.

They were without clean water.

A pararadage at a water treatment plant left the city under a boil water notice on Sunday.

And just this past summer, a different boil water notice this time in Jackson, Mississippi

left thousands of people there without safe tap water for almost seven weeks.

Jackson is telling us what's coming for all of us.

This is Tom Rooney.

He's a global expert in the water industry.

And he had this dire warning at a recent water conference at Columbia University.

We can look at Jackson, Mississippi and feel bad for them or maybe make fun of them or say

that's not me, but the United States really has to wake up and say, Jackson, Mississippi

is the canary in the mind.

Yet the Magnolia State is more than a warning for our nation's bleak water future.

And we also hold this secret for how to avoid it.

This is the indicator from planet money.

I'm Darien Woods.

And I'm Stephen Bissaha from the Gulf States Newsroom.

We're a happy family of public radio stations and Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi.

And to down the show, two opposite approaches for dealing with water infrastructure problems

in the US from two Mississippi men.

One is using teamwork to deliver clean water in one of the poorest parts of the country.

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