Everyone stood as U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate strode back into his courtroom after a 15-minute recess to continue Thursday’s status conference with Ted Henifin and federal, state and Jackson officials.
What exactly the judge wanted to talk about next was anyone’s guess. Wingate just spent an hour receiving an update from Henifin and his company, JXN Water, and their progress repairing the city’s long-troubled water system. Wingate oversees this work, calling status conferences for updates on JXN Water’s repairs. Henifin must also submit a quarterly report to the judge.
Nobody could have guessed that for the next hour Wingate would grill officials with the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice over their decision to host two public meetings to hear from Jacksonians about the city’s water system and its future . The meetings were set for 6 p.m. Thursday and 10 a.m. Friday.
A letter from Mayor Lumumba sparks Wingate’s questioning
Wingate sat and meticulously questioned the federal officials over why exactly they decided to host the meetings and why they didn’t run it by his court. He questioned if the public meetings would do more harm than good, suggesting that there was no way to verify if the residents’ were being truthful, or that they were residents of Jackson at all.