In a stunning article published on Sunday, The Clarion-Ledger reported that the City of Jackson has pumped 2.8 billion gallons of sewage into the Pearl River over the past four years. The City's infrastructure has deteriorated to the point that even the smallest rainfall leads to discharging waste water directly into the river -- as a matter of de facto policy, apparently.

According to the report, the City probably will enter into a consent decree later this month with the Environmental Protection Agency, and that agreement would require the City to begin spending hundreds of millions of dollars to restore its sewer system and to pay a fine to the EPA. But that process will take many years.

This is the same Pearl River from which Jackson draws its drinking water, by the way.