- Virginia Evans told CNN she received a $4,000 water bill following the Mississippi water crisis.
- Jackson, Miss. main water treatment facility began to fail in late August, prompting the crisis.
One woman in Jackson, Mississippi says she was hit with a $4,000 water bill in September following a water crisis that left the city without clean drinking water for more than a month.
Virginia Evans said she received the bill on September 9 despite the water crisis that has forced her and other residents there to avoid drinking or cooking with tap water, according to CNN.
"I don't know what they need to do but they need to do something because no one should be paying this amount when you're not even able to use the water," Evans told CNN.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency on August 30 after Jackson's main water treatment facility began to fail, leaving the city without enough water pressure to flush toilets and meet other critical needs. The city remained under a boil water notice from July 29 to September 15.
Many Jackson residents have been complaining of high water bills following the crisis. According to NBC, some people in the city began having problems with their water bills in 2010 when Siemens Corporation installed new water meters and installed a new billing system.
Jackson sued Siemens in 2019, claiming that 10,000 of the 60,000 new water meters it installed were not functioning correctly, NBC reported. Siemens settled the lawsuit out of court for $90 million.
Siemens and Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment on Saturday.
Jackson began installing new water meters in 2021 and a spokesperson for the city told CNN that its new water meters were "reading accurately based on our assessment to date."
"There are some remaining software-related issues that are creating issues for some residents with new meters," spokeswoman Melissa Payne said in the statement. "These issues have been identified and work is underway to address the issues."
During an October 6 community meeting, city councilman Kenneth Stokes encouraged people facing abnormally high water bills and those who have received cutoff notices to appeal their bills, according to WJTV. Stokes emphasized during the meeting that their water services cannot be disconnected if they are in the middle of an appeal on their bill.
Debra Boswell, the communication director for Mississippi Animal Rescue in Jackson, told WJTV that the organization did not receive a water bill from 2017 to 2021. The first bill the animal shelter recieved in 2021 was roughly $19,000, WJTV reported.
"We called, we asked for copies of the of the bills that created that $19,000 balance, nothing," Boswell told WJTV. "So I didn't pay the bill. I didn't pay it."