{"id":765482,"date":"2025-09-23T05:55:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T12:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=765482"},"modified":"2025-09-23T11:23:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T18:23:23","slug":"how-jxn-water-navigated-a-crisis","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/how-jxn-water-navigated-a-crisis","title":{"rendered":"Creating a Better Water Utility: Mississippi\u2019s Largest City"},"author":671,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478372],"esri_blog_department":[478202,478212],"class_list":["post-765482","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","esri-blog-category-water","esri_blog_department-infrastructure","esri_blog_department-resilience"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"When Jackson's water system failed, JXN Water turned to GIS mapping to rebuild from crisis in Mississippi's largest city.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"JXN Water used GIS mapping technology and smart sensors to transform Jackson's failing water system from a crisis that left 153,000 residents without safe drinking water into a modern, data-driven utility that can pinpoint problems and prevent city-wide outages.\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Jackson\u2019s water crisis leads to an integrated system and a digital twin.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>GIS technology helps the utility map and track water outages across the city.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Intelligent asset management transforms 20,000 scattered drawings into a unified digital network.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When 153,000 residents of Jackson, Mississippi, lost access to safe drinking water in August 2022, the flooding of the Pearl River brought national attention to what had been a quiet crisis. The flood didn\u2019t contaminate the water system, but it revealed the extent of Jackson\u2019s infrastructure failures\u2014burst pipes, closed valves, aging equipment, and disconnected systems that made it difficult to coordinate emergency responses.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Into this challenge stepped Jordan Hillman, a city planner who had never run a water utility but understood something crucial: You can\u2019t fix what you can\u2019t see. Armed with geographic information system (GIS) technology and a determination to map the failures of the invisible network beneath Jackson\u2019s streets, she would help transform one of America\u2019s most troubled water systems.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">JXN Water was established by a federal court order as a third-party entity with federal funding to manage the city\u2019s water system. While Jackson had thousands of infrastructure drawings dating back decades, they were stored in filing cabinets and on portable hard drives\u2014organized but inaccessible to field crews that needed real-time information during emergencies.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI went home as a planner and came back to work the next day at the water plant,\u201d Hillman said. \u201cThe first thing I pulled out of my pocket was geographic information system [GIS] technology to track water outage calls and figure out where the network needed to be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Sleuthing Hidden Problems<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The situation in Jackson was intensified by\u00a0decades of incomplete record-keeping, disparate systems, and disconnected departments that rarely shared information.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hillman\u2019s detective work began with tracking suspected closed valves, water quality complaints, and pressure issues by using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/arcgis-survey123\/overview\">ArcGIS Survey123<\/a> forms and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/arcgis-field-maps\/overview\">ArcGIS Field Maps<\/a> applications. Her priority was identifying water loss on transmission lines\u2014the major pipes that carry water from treatment plants across the city.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beyond noting each individual water connection, the city needed a holistic view. Water systems are intricate networks where everything connects to everything else. As Hillman learned early on, \u201cEvery time we made major progress, we broke something else in the process, putting stress back where it wasn\u2019t before.\u201d Water that can\u2019t flow will find another path, often bursting weaker pipes elsewhere in the system.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She knew GIS could help and she was eager to train staff to use mapping tools\u00a0to report problems, apply solutions, and track\u00a0progress on thousands of repairs.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[765522,765552,765502,765512]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe city, by nature, was siloed,\u201d Hillman said.\u00a0\u201cThe water plants did not talk to the distribution system.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The city had no feedback systems for monitoring water pressure throughout the distribution network, so plant operators worked with limited information. When pressure dropped below 60 psi at the treatment plants, operators would declare a citywide boil water notice\u2014even though many neighborhoods might have had perfectly safe water. The goal was to identify where actual pressure loss occurred so that only impacted areas would receive notices.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Numbers illustrate the dysfunction.\u00a0Between 2018 and 2022, Jackson endured nine citywide boil water notices lasting a combined 129 days.\u00a0Restaurants closed, schools shut down, and residents lived with constant uncertainty about whether their tap water was safe to drink.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Strong Collaboration Leads to Service Improvements <\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The scale of the challenge quickly became clear.\u00a0JXN Water had to fix issues on multiple fronts.\u00a0Work order systems weren\u2019t functioning.\u00a0There was no reliable inventory of pipes and valves. Meanwhile, Hillman and the JXN Water team were trying to get\u00a0critical transmission valves\u00a0open,\u00a0stop massive water losses, and\u00a0understand how water actually flowed from the treatment plants to customers.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt became pretty evident that the city was not in a position to do all the\u00a0data development and mapping\u00a0work needed,\u201d Hillman said.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hillman turned to Stantec, an engineering firm specializing in water utilities and GIS technology (see sidebar).\u00a0\u201cIt all started with me handing a hard drive to a Stantec team member with\u00a0over 20,000 drawings\u00a0on it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The City of Jackson had maintained an organized storage system with documented projects and atlas maps for reference. However, these infrastructure drawings\u2014though well-organized and scanned\u2014were stored on portable hard drives in a format that made the drawings difficult for mobile field crews to access effectively during the crisis.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cLuckily, there were some really smart people at Stantec who organized it and coded it in a way that actually made sense,\u201d Hillman said.\u00a0 \u201cWe wanted to put information in the pockets of staff. They don\u2019t need to be fishing through 15 drawings to find a pipe or valve location.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The solution combined advanced network mapping with practical field tools.\u00a0Stantec helped JXN Water\u00a0build\u00a0mobile web applications with interactive maps\u00a0that work on smartphones and tablets. \u201cWe\u00a0can ask\u00a0\u2018Where\u2019s the chlorine?\u2019 and it pops that up on the map and labels it on the web app,\u201d Hillman said.\u00a0\u201cWe love it for its ease of use.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stantec helped implement <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/arcgis-utility-network\/overview\">ArcGIS Utility Network<\/a> to create a digital replica of Jackson\u2019s water system. This intelligent model is fed data from a network of sensors (called a SCADA system) that constantly monitor water pressure, flow rates, and chemical levels throughout the city while smart meters track usage at every customer location.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Together these integrated technologies made a network digital twin\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/storymaps.arcgis.com\/stories\/dc7a7c93a3ee462a9aefe20cdc9ae3e6\">a real-time computer model<\/a> that shows how water moves through Jackson\u2019s underground infrastructure.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Many Steps Toward a Holistic Understanding<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The network of sensors feeding input to the digital twin revealed patterns that had been invisible. Hillman and her team could finally see how water moved from the city\u2019s two main treatment plants. By testing water hardness levels at different locations, they could trace which plant was supplying water to each neighborhood. They could track chlorine breakdown and aging to ensure that proper disinfection reached every customer.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most importantly, the utility could stop managing the entire city like a single system. Operators can see real-time intelligence about every neighborhood including pressure, flow, and water quality on dashboards and interactive maps. When problems arise, the operators can isolate affected areas, automatically adjust pumps and valves, and target responses.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[768398,768396,768408,768407,768406]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This comprehensive monitoring transformed JXN Water's crisis management into strategic control. But the technology foundation was only as good as the people using it\u2014and the real test would be whether longtime utility workers would adopt digital tools in their daily work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Empowering the People Who Know the System Best<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cPeople think we had a lot of consultants come in and save us,\u201d Hillman said. \u201cI like to fight back on that.\u00a0Most of our leadership team, including the people who work in our plants and distribution system, were here before the crisis.\u00a0They just needed the right investment in themselves, the right tools, and\u00a0access to do the things they already knew how to do.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The change was dramatic and visible. Workers went from using what they called \u201ctrusty dusties\u201d\u2014smudged, creased drawings from the 1970s stuffed under truck seats\u2014to confidently using tablets and phones loaded with accurate maps and real-time system data.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead of guessing where pipes and valves are located, the workers can see precise maps on their phones. Instead of driving back to the office to file reports, they photograph and document repairs instantly with information flowing back into the central system within hours.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWatching people using that data\u2014figuring out who their customer is, whether they have an account, whether they\u2019re paying their bill\u2014makes my heart happy,\u201d Hillman said.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the real transformation went deeper than individuals' productivity. The digital tools broke down walls that had separated different parts of the utility for decades. Water plant operators and field crews, who had never coordinated their efforts, began working together daily. Meter technicians who had worked in isolation started collaborating with the billing department. Sewer teams began to help with water leak triage.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cNow I see\u00a0our meter folks talking on the phone with the distribution folks, talking on the phone with\u00a0whoever needs to issue\u00a0boil water notices\u00a0from the plant, the lab,\u201d Hillman said. \u201cThe silos that kept people from communicating have mostly disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The result was more than technological\u2014it was cultural. Staff members once isolated by outdated systems now had the tools and information they needed to work as a unified team.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>How Better Data Has Delivered Better Service<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For JXN Water customers, the shift from crisis to reliability brought measurable improvements to daily life. The data-driven approach did more than fix infrastructure. It\u00a0fundamentally changed what residents could expect from their water utility.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most important change was a dramatic reduction in citywide water emergencies.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since February 2023, the city has had only two citywide boil water notices lasting just two days\u2014a 98 percent reduction from the 129 days of notices between 2018 and 2022.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When repairs are needed now, precise mapping allows JXN Water to isolate affected areas instead of shutting down the entire city.\u00a0Where an outage once required over 100 water samples citywide\u00a0to clear a boil water notice, the same incident now needs only 25 samples from identified\u00a0affected areas.\u00a0And service restoration takes hours instead of days.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The restaurant industry experienced perhaps the most significant relief. \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to keep the restaurant community out of boil water notices since 2023,\u201d Hillman said. Business owners who once faced impossible choices between serving potentially unsafe water or closing their doors now can serve their communities without fear of sudden shutdowns.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Across JXN Water\u2019s network, the improvements are equally dramatic. JXN Water has repaired over 5,200 leaks in the distribution system and opened numerous valves that were mistakenly left closed. These improvements increased water pressure by more than 20 psi in parts of the South Jackson district\u2014the difference between getting a trickle when turning on the tap and having a reliable flow. The system that once pumped over 50 million gallons daily due to massive leaks now operates efficiently at 35 million gallons of daily water production, saving an estimated $3.7 million annually.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jackson has also become far more resilient to severe winter weather\u2014historically one of the system\u2019s biggest vulnerabilities. Polar vortexes and extreme freezes had previously created chaos for the water system. Massive demand spikes would prompt treatment plants to produce up to 15 million gallons more than normal, often leading to system-wide failures. Without smart metering or real-time monitoring, staff had assumed these spikes came from widespread pipe breaks. They spent precious time chasing phantom leaks through frozen ground while schools closed and residents went without water.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, JXN Water\u2019s intelligent monitoring reveals the true story behind winter demand spikes: Customers were running faucets wide open to prevent frozen pipes instead of keeping the careful drip that utilities recommend.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last winter, Jackson made it through its freeze without outages\u2014a milestone that seemed impossible just three years ago. As Hillman put it, \u201cWhen we make it through a freeze and nobody\u2019s talking about water, that\u2019s progress.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For residents, these improvements translate to something simple but profound: turning on a faucet and trusting that clean water will flow consistently.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jackson\u2019s journey from water crisis to reliability demonstrates how the right technology in the right hands can do more than rebuild infrastructure\u2014it can restore community trust.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What started as an emergency response has become a model for water utilities nationwide facing aging infrastructure and growing demands.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">JXN Water\u2019s success isn\u2019t just about sensors and systems\u2014it\u2019s about empowering people with the tools they need to do their jobs effectively. When field crews can see the invisible network beneath their feet, when operators can respond to problems before they become crises, and when different departments can finally work together, the entire community benefits.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn more about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/water-utilities\/business-areas\/network-management\">water utilities use GIS to create smart network management for water, wastewater, and stormwater<\/a>.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>From 20,000 Drawings to a Digital Twin<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When engineering firm Stantec started working with JXN Water, Stantec staff were handed a hard drive containing over 20,000 scanned drawings.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stantec teams set about transforming the decades of scattered documentation into a working network digital twin. \u201cWe delivered seven full-time equivalent years\u2019 worth of data development work in nine months,\u201d said Manuel P\u00e9rez, North American geospatial services discipline leader for Stantec\u2019s water group.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But speed wasn\u2019t enough. The system had to work seamlessly for field crews that had never used digital mapping tools. To achieve this, Stantec first had to integrate disconnected information systems.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For decades, many utilities have managed their networks with separate systems\u2014asset locations in one database, maintenance records in another, and inspection reports filed somewhere else.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t replace an HVAC system and not get the service manuals,\u201d said Mike Doyle, principal for Stantec\u2019s enterprise system\u2019s group. \u201cBut many utilities have completely isolated maintenance and operations data.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stantec is a global architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firm with multi-disciplinary teams working together to create integrated asset intelligence. The water group brings deep understanding of utility data and field workflows, with a network management specialty. Stantec's management technology consulting team focuses on advanced implementations of asset management solutions and builds connections between systems.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The approach creates what Meredith Degner, Stantec's geospatial services lead for the JXN Water project, calls the \u201cboomerang effect\u201d\u2014information flows out to field crews and must flow back to the central system. When field crews find a closed valve or repair a leak, that updated data automatically flows back into the GIS, keeping maps current and accurate. Ultimately this data flow achieves the goal of a closed-loop system, ensuring that the best information is in the hands of stakeholders at all levels.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For JXN Water, this integration transformed institutional knowledge\u2014the informal understanding that longtime employees carry in their heads\u2014into a digital system that could be shared, updated, and passed on to new workers. The result enables preventative maintenance.\u00a0Instead of waiting for pipes to burst,\u00a0operators can use condition data and system modeling to identify which infrastructure needs attention and plan repairs strategically.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">JXN Water moved from crisis management to strategic planning,\u00a0creating a model for other utilities facing similar challenges.<\/p>","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Creating a Better Water Utility: Mississippi\u2019s Largest City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When Jackson&#039;s water system failed, JXN Water turned to GIS mapping to rebuild from crisis in Mississippi&#039;s largest city.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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