When the Water Fails, Who Protects You? — Is America Better Yet?

By Roberto Zapatero
Independent Forensic Investigative Journalist, Is America Better Yet?

Suppose you turn on your kitchen faucet tomorrow morning.

The water looks normal.

You fill a glass.

You make coffee with it.

You give it to your children.

And then, later, you find out there was lead in the system.

Now suppose government officials knew there was a serious problem, or should have known, and you were still being told the water was safe.

What would you do?

Who would you call?

Who would be responsible?

And what right would you actually have?

That is the question sitting underneath a new federal court ruling out of Jackson, Mississippi.

On September 4, 2026, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against Jackson residents who said government decisions helped expose them to lead-contaminated drinking water and that city officials then misled residents about the danger.

The court wrote:

“It is undisputed that the Constitution does not guarantee clean water.”

That sentence sounds shocking.

It is shocking.

But it also needs to be understood correctly.

The court did not say governments are free to poison your water.

It did not erase the Safe Drinking Water Act.

It did not say contaminated water is legal.

What it said was narrower, but still deeply important:

The Jackson residents had not established the kind of constitutional claim they were trying to bring under the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. §1983.

And that matters because the Fifth Circuit covers Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

So if you live in one of those states, this ruling now helps define what constitutional remedy may be available when government itself is accused of helping create the danger.

That is where this story starts.

But it does not end there.

Jackson did not wake up one morning with a broken water system

This crisis had a history.

And when you follow that history, the idea that this was simply one city that failed to take care of its pipes falls apart pretty quickly.

Federal investigators later found failures at several levels.

The EPA Office of Inspector General found that the Mississippi State Department of Health did not consistently enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act against Jackson.

It also found that EPA itself did not fully understand how serious Jackson's problems had become until an on-site inspection in February 2020.

The watchdog said EPA might have acted sooner if information had been communicated accurately and promptly.

Think about that.

The agency responsible for protecting drinking water may not have had the full picture soon enough.

A separate EPA inspector-general investigation found serious financial, technical and managerial problems inside Jackson itself.

But it also found that Mississippi could have done more to provide flexible financing and help to disadvantaged communities like Jackson before the crisis reached the level it did.

So this is not a simple story of one mayor, one city department or one bad decision.

The public record shows something much broader.

Local capacity failed. State oversight failed. Federal oversight came late.

And residents lived with what happened next.

What the residents say happened

The plaintiffs in Sterling v. City of Jackson are Priscilla Sterling, Raine Becker, Shawn Miller and John Bennett.

They allege that actions by city officials contributed to or worsened lead contamination and that residents were then given misleading assurances about whether the water was safe.

Those allegations have not been proved at trial.

That matters.

The case was dismissed before trial, so the appeals court was deciding whether the allegations, taken as true where required at that stage, were enough to support the constitutional claims.

According to the court record, several of Sterling's children had been diagnosed with lead poisoning.

Other plaintiffs alleged symptoms or effects they associated with lead poisoning or other contamination.

So when you read this case, keep one thing in mind.

The residents were not simply saying:

You failed to fix our water.

Their allegation was more serious.

It was closer to this:

Your actions helped create or worsen the danger, and then you told us we were safe.

That is a very different accusation.

The court said that still was not enough

The Fifth Circuit heard this case en banc, which means the participating active judges considered it rather than the usual three-judge panel.

The vote was 10–5.

The majority declined to recognize the constitutional rights the residents were asking the court to recognize.

That included a substantive due-process claim tied to contaminated municipal drinking water and a claimed right to accurate information from public officials about the danger.

The majority said other remedies may exist.

State law.

Tort claims.

Environmental laws.

Regulation.

Elections.

Legislation.

All of those things may matter.

But the constitutional path the Jackson residents were trying to use was closed.

That is why the viral shorthand — “you do not have a right to clean water” — is both understandable and incomplete.

The real ruling is more specific.

But once you understand it, I am not sure it becomes much more comforting.

Five judges saw it differently

Five judges dissented.

Judge Catharina Haynes was joined by Judges Carl Stewart, Stephen Higginson, Dana Douglas and Irma Carrillo Ramirez.

They believed the residents had alleged enough to continue with claims involving bodily integrity and something called the state-created-danger doctrine.

That doctrine matters because it deals with a very basic question.

Did government merely fail to protect you from a danger created by someone else?

Or did government itself create or increase the danger?

Those are not the same thing.

The dissent believed Jackson residents had alleged enough of the second kind of harm to move forward.

And here is where this gets even more interesting.

Other federal appeals courts have recognized state-created-danger claims in some form.

The Fifth Circuit has not.

So depending on where you live, the constitutional argument available to you may be different.

Same country.

Same Constitution.

Different federal circuit.

Different legal path.

Flint went another way

If this sounds familiar, there is a reason.

Think about Flint, Michigan.

Residents there also alleged that government decisions exposed people to dangerous drinking water.

In the Flint litigation, the Sixth Circuit allowed important constitutional bodily-integrity claims to move forward against government officials.

The Fifth Circuit looked at that precedent in the Jackson case.

It did not follow it.

So imagine two families making similar allegations.

One lives in Michigan.

The other lives in Mississippi.

Both say government actions exposed them to dangerous water.

Both say officials knew there was a problem.

One may have a constitutional path that the other does not.

That is not a small legal technicality.

That is something ordinary people should know.

And then Erin Brockovich came back into this story

Most people know Erin Brockovich from Hinkley, California.

Her investigation helped expose groundwater contamination tied to Pacific Gas & Electric and became one of the most famous environmental cases in the country.

A movie was made about her.

And one thing worth correcting because people often get it wrong:

Erin Brockovich is not a lawyer.

She became famous because she investigated.

And she is still investigating.

This year, Brockovich and journalist Suzanne Boothby have been looking at water problems, infrastructure, public disclosure and the rapid growth of artificial-intelligence data centers.

Their reporting does not prove anything about Jackson.

There is no established connection between the Jackson lawsuit and Brockovich's current investigations.

But their work keeps raising the same kinds of questions.

Who controls the water?

Who gets the information?

Who gets warned?

Who gets left out?

And how much does the public really know before decisions are made?

The water problem you cannot see

On July 29, Brockovich and Boothby published “The Data Center Water Secret.”

They focused on something most people probably never think about.

When a data center tells a community how much water it expects to use, what exactly does that number include?

There is direct water use.

That is water used at the facility itself, often for cooling.

Then there can be indirect water use.

That can include water used somewhere else to generate the electricity the facility consumes.

And these facilities can consume enormous amounts of electricity.

Now, that does not mean every data center has the same water footprint.

They do not.

It depends on the cooling system, the climate, the power source and the design.

But that is exactly why the question matters.

If a company tells your town how much water a proposed project will use, are you being told the whole number?

Or only the number that crosses the property line?

That is not anti-technology.

That is not anti-business.

That is a basic public-information question.

Louisa County, Virginia

Brockovich's reporting also led us toward Louisa County, Virginia.

A resident named Austin Newsom lives beside property being developed for an Amazon data-center campus.

He reported that his well water turned brown after construction began.

Now stop right there.

That does not prove Amazon caused it.

A change happens near a construction site. That is a lead.

It is not a conclusion.

So we looked for something stronger.

There is a federal lawsuit.

In Newsom v. Amazon Data Services, Inc., a federal judge summarized allegations involving dust, flooding, structural damage, noise, traffic problems and water contamination after construction activity began.

Those are still allegations.

Causation has not been established.

But now we have questions we can actually investigate.

What did the well water look like before construction?

Was it tested?

Was it tested afterward?

What contaminants, if any, were found?

What did county officials know?

What did environmental regulators know?

What studies were done?

Did anyone compare the before-and-after results?

That is how a real investigation moves forward.

Not from accusation to conclusion.

From accusation to records.

Brockovich kept following the water

On August 5, Brockovich and Boothby published another investigation called “Where's The Water?”

They looked at disputes in California, Virginia and Colorado.

Different places.

Different facts.

Different problems.

But again, the same basic questions kept appearing.

Who controls the resource?

Who knows what condition it is in?

Who is using it?

Who sees the studies?

Who finds out first when something changes?

That does not mean these places are part of one giant scandal.

There is no evidence of that.

But when similar accountability questions keep showing up in different communities, journalists should notice.

A pattern is not proof.

It is a reason to keep looking.

Corpus Christi, Puerto Rico and Prichard

Then, on August 12, Brockovich and Boothby looked at water problems in Corpus Christi, Texas; Puerto Rico; and Prichard, Alabama.

Again, these are not the same situation.

And I do not want to pretend they are.

But each one shows a different way a public water system can become fragile.

In Corpus Christi, long-running drought conditions led to serious water restrictions.

Conditions have improved.

On August 27, 2026, the city moved to Stage 1 water restrictions.

As of September 4, the city reported Lake Corpus Christi at 88.7%, Choke Canyon Reservoir at 23.2%, and the two combined at 41.5%.

So if you read an older story saying Corpus Christi was still in its worst drought stage, that is no longer accurate.

That matters too.

An investigation has to keep changing when the facts change.

Puerto Rico shows you another version of the same vulnerability

Puerto Rico's government published scheduled water-service interruptions during August for communities served by the Sergio Cuevas and Guzmán Arriba filtration plants.

Some of those interruptions were scheduled to last about 48 hours.

Think about what that means for a family.

You are not debating whether the water tastes strange.

You are planning around whether water is going to come out of the faucet at all.

Brockovich's reporting included broader figures about system losses and the number of homes affected.

Those numbers are useful leads.

But where we have not independently confirmed a number, we are not going to pretend we have.

That is part of this investigation too.

Lead first.

Record second.

Conclusion only when the evidence gets us there.

These are not all the same story

I want to be very clear about that.

Jackson is not Flint.

Flint is not Louisa County.

Louisa County is not Corpus Christi.

Corpus Christi is not Puerto Rico.

Data centers are not automatically responsible for every water problem around them.

There is no evidence that one company, one government or one hidden actor is behind all of this.

If we said that, we would be manufacturing a story instead of reporting one.

What connects these places is not one culprit.

It is a set of questions.

And they are questions every one of us should understand.

Who controls the water?

Who tests it?

Who sees the results?

Who gets warned?

Who decides how much can be used?

Who enforces the rules?

And what happens when all of those safeguards fail?

The law still protects drinking water

The Fifth Circuit ruling did not erase drinking-water law.

The Safe Drinking Water Act still exists.

Public water systems still have federal requirements.

EPA and state regulators still have enforcement powers.

There may be other federal and state legal remedies depending on the facts.

Jackson itself proves that.

EPA reached an enforceable agreement with the city in 2021.

The U.S. Department of Justice later sued over the water system.

A federal court installed an outside manager.

So yes, protections exist.

But here is the part that matters when you are standing at the sink.

A law sitting in a book does not test your water.

A regulation does not call you on the phone.

A statute does not knock on your door.

People have to do those things.

Someone has to test.

Someone has to understand the result.

Someone has to report it.

Someone has to act.

Someone has to warn you.

And somebody has to say:

Do not drink that water.

So what right do you really have?

Maybe that is the question we should be asking now.

Not whether the Constitution literally contains the words clean drinking water.

It does not.

The harder question is this:

If government actions help make your water unsafe, officials know there is a danger, and you are allegedly told everything is fine anyway —

what can you actually do before the damage is permanent?

Five judges on the Fifth Circuit thought the Jackson residents should have been allowed to keep pursuing their constitutional claims.

Ten judges disagreed.

Millions of people in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas now live under that precedent.

At the same time, Erin Brockovich's recent investigations are pointing toward communities asking many of the same questions before another Jackson or Flint reaches full crisis.

And maybe that is where journalism belongs.

Before the lawsuits.

Before the emergency bottles of water.

Before the press conferences.

Before everybody says they had no idea.

Look at the permits.

Look at the testing.

Look at the utility records.

Look at the aquifers.

Look at the corporate promises.

Look at the regulators.

Look at the public notices.

Look at what officials knew.

And look very carefully at when they knew it.

Because by the time everyone agrees there was a water crisis, somebody may already have been drinking it.

What we know so far

Verified: On September 4, 2026, the Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, rejected the Jackson residents' federal constitutional claims concerning alleged exposure to contaminated drinking water and allegedly misleading information from public officials.

Verified: The decision was 10–5.

Verified: EPA's Office of Inspector General documented failures involving Jackson's water-system capacity, Mississippi's regulatory and financial-assistance practices, and shortcomings in federal oversight.

Verified: A federal lawsuit by Austin Newsom and his business alleges water contamination and other harms associated with construction beside an Amazon data-center development in Louisa County, Virginia. The allegation is real. The cause has not been established.

Verified: Corpus Christi moved to Stage 1 water restrictions on August 27. As of September 4, its two reservoirs used for drought calculations had a combined reported capacity of 41.5%.

Verified: Puerto Rico implemented scheduled water-service interruptions during August for communities served by specified filtration plants.

Verified as reporting, but not independently confirmed in every detail: Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby have been investigating water infrastructure, data-center development, transparency disputes and community water problems across several states and Puerto Rico.

Not established: We found no evidence that Jackson, Flint, data-center development and the other water problems discussed here share one cause or one coordinated actor.

What we're looking at next

This is an unfolding Is America Better Yet? investigation.

We are looking at:

• what communities are actually being told about data-center water demand;
• whether public officials are seeing full water-use estimates before approving projects;
• which records are being withheld, redacted or difficult to obtain;
• what happened to Austin Newsom's well water in Louisa County and whether testing can establish a cause;
• what government records show about the aquifer and disclosure questions raised in Colorado;
• the water-system and financial problems in Prichard, Alabama;
• how constitutional protections differ depending on which federal appeals circuit you live in;
• and whether people are being warned early enough to protect themselves when water becomes unsafe.

Some of those questions may lead to wrongdoing.

Some may lead somewhere else.

We will follow the records.

And when the evidence stops, we will stop with it.

Sources

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — Sterling v. City of Jackson, No. 24-60370, en banc decision, September 4, 2026.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General — State Program Deficiencies and Inadequate EPA Oversight of State Enforcement Contributed to the Drinking Water Crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, August 12, 2024.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General — Lack of State Financial Support and Local Capacity Prolonged Jackson, Mississippi Drinking Water Issues, May 13, 2024.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Jackson, Mississippi drinking-water enforcement record.
• U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia — Newsom et al. v. Amazon Data Services, Inc., July 10, 2026 memorandum opinion.
• City of Corpus Christi — Stage 1 Water Restrictions and September 4, 2026 reservoir data.
• Government of Puerto Rico — August 2026 Scheduled Water Service Interruption Plan.
• Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby, The Brockovich Report — “The Data Center Water Secret,” July 29, 2026.
• Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby, The Brockovich Report — “Where's The Water?”, August 5, 2026.
• Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby, The Brockovich Report — “We Can't Keep Ignoring Our Water Crisis,” August 12, 2026.

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If you have water-test results, public records, firsthand knowledge or documents that could help us investigate this story, contact Is America Better Yet? at iaby-general-inbox.bagging303@passmail.com.

I write for you.

— Roberto

Is America Better Yet?

Living Record

This is an unfolding investigation. We will update this article as court filings, water-quality records, regulatory findings, public records and other evidence become available. Allegations involving companies, government officials or facilities will not be treated as established fact until the evidence supports them.

Is America Better Yet? uses artificial intelligence to assist with research, organization, drafting and editing. AI output is not evidence. Consequential factual claims are checked against source material before publication.

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