Timing is everything in politics. And it seems just before kicking off his reelection bid, President Joe Biden felt it was finally a good time to send aid to Jackson, Mississippi, for the town’s ongoing water crisis.

In August 2022, Jackson’s water system was already dealing with systemic issues like old, leaky pipes and malfunctions at treatment plants, and then the city’s main water treatment plant began failing after torrential rains. About 150,000 residents were left without clean drinking water.

According to the latest U.S. Census in 2021, Jackson is 82.8 percent Black and 15 percent white.

Jackson’s water system is one of the oldest in the country. Residents, who often complain about brown water, leaking sewage, and low water pressure, are routinely directed by authorities to boil their water for safety. Since the water outage in the summer of 2022, locals have mainly relied on bottled water for eating and drinking. Some have also had to use bottled water bathing as well, NBC News reported.

In September 2022, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a federal complaint in which the group alleged that Mississippi officials had “all but assured” a drinking water calamity in Jackson by depriving the state’s capital of badly needed funds to upgrade its infrastructure. 

“Jackson’s majority-Black population has been repeatedly ignored, spurned, or ridiculed, resulting in the most recent water access inequity and crisis,” the NAACP said. 

Biden announced on June 6 that he was sending more than $100 million in funding for repairs to Jackson’s beleaguered water system. The funding is the first portion of more than half a billion dollars appropriated by Congress.

On April 19, Biden announced his run for reelection. And it was not until June 17 that he held his first campaign event, just over a week after he announced the Jackson funding.

“For years, the people of Jackson, Mississippi, have suffered the consequences of aging water infrastructure,” Biden wrote in a statement. “Last summer, the city’s water system reached a crisis point when a major flood aggravated long-standing problems in the system and left tens of thousands of people without any running water for days on end. Long before then, families in Jackson lived under the constant threat of boil water orders.”

According to Biden, the “initial $115 million investment” in Jackson’s water infrastructure would come from funding provided by 2022’s spending bill. The bill includes a total of $600 million for the city’s water system, CNN reported.

Mitch Landrieu, senior adviser to President Biden and coordinator for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, told theGrio that the initial $115 million award would be given immediately.

Charles McCaskill, 68, calls out his thanks to members of the Mississippi Students Water Crisis Advocacy team who delivered two cases of water to his south Jackson, Miss., home, on Sept . 7, 2022. A boil-water advisory has been lifted for Mississippi’s capital, and the state will stop handing out free bottled water on Saturday. But the crisis isn’t over. Water pressure still hasn’t been fully restored in Jackson, and some residents say their tap water still comes out looking dirty and smelling like sewage. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)