PINE BELT, Miss. (WDAM) – More than 40 counties in Mississippi are now considered disaster areas amid the ongoing drought across the nation.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the following counties are considered primary drought-struck:

• Adams
• Amite
• Bolivar
• Calhoun
• Claiborne
• Coahoma
• Copiah
• Franklin
• Greene
• Grenada
• Jefferson
• Lafayette
• Leflore
• Lincoln
• Panola
• Perry
• Quitman
• Sunflower
• Tallahatchie
• Wilkinson
• Yalobusha

The USDA is considering these counties contiguous to the drought-struck:

• Carroll
• Chickasaw
• Forrest
• George
• Hinds
• Holmes
• Humphreys
• Jones
• Lawrence
• Marshall
• Montgomery
• Pike
• Pontotoc
• Rankin
• Simpson
• Stone
• Tate
• Tunic
• Union
• Walthal
• Warren
• Washington
• Wayne
• Webster

The department is now offering relief for impacted farmers through low-interest loans to cover production and physical losses.

Farmers have until Dec. 10 to apply for the loans at their local farm service agency.

“Not a lot of farmers are lining up to get another loan, I can tell you that, especially in these days and times,” Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson said. “However, it’s something that could help in a critical situation.”

The loans are intended to help pay for essential family living expenses, reorganize farming operations and refinance specific debts, according to the USDA.

Gipson said he’s predicting, based on trends from the U.S. Drought Monitor, that current conditions will eventually trigger other forms of relief, like the Livestock Forage Disaster Program.

“It’s going to help farmers be able to purchase hay to keep feeding the cows and keep the herd going,” Gipson said.

The state has already gotten around half of its regular rainfall so far in 2026, making it the 10th-driest year on record to date.

That’s according to the Mississippi State University Extension Service.

Industry leaders are hoping for more rainfall, but at this point, they expect the disaster list to keep growing.

“We can only pray that the rain will fall before too long,” Gipson said. “We don’t need this dry pattern to continue throughout the entire summer.”

More information on the emergency farm loans is available on the USDA website.

Want more WDAM 7 news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

“We continue to weigh our options going forward,’ mayor says

• A new law creates a nine-member regional board that could take over Jackson’s water and sewer systems.
• The authority cannot take control of the system without a lease agreement from the city of Jackson.
• Jackson city leaders have raised concerns about governance, timing, and funding for the new authority.
• Any transition away from the current federally-overseen system must be approved by a U.S. District Judge.

Jackson city leaders got their clearest look yet at how a new regional water authority would work and what it could mean for the city’s control of its water and sewer systems.

During a Wednesday, April 222 Public Works Committee meeting, members of the Jackson City Council received a detailed legal breakdown of the Metro Jackson Water Authority Act, raising new concerns about governance, timing and what happens if the city does nothing.

The law, signed April 1 by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, creates a nine-member regional board that could eventually take over Jackson’s water and wastewater systems. But as City Attorney Drew Martin explained, the authority does not legally exist until at least five members are appointed, which is a threshold that could be reached without Jackson naming any of its own representatives.

Mississippi government: Why was there no State of the State address in Mississippi this year?

That possibility drew concern from council members, who noted the board could begin operating — and even hire a president to lead the system — before the city fully decides its approach, though it the odds of that happening quickly and by the May 1 deadline are unlikely.

Under the law, Jackson would appoint three members. The remaining six seats are filled by state leaders and surrounding municipalities, including appointments from the governor (two), lieutenant governor and the mayors of Byram and Ridgeland. One additional seat is appointed by the governor with input from Jackson’s mayor. Those appointments are due May 1.

Still, the city retains a critical point of leverage: the authority cannot take control of the system without a lease agreement from Jackson. The law requires the authority to negotiate a lease with the city to transfer control of the water and wastewater systems, but the terms are left up to both sides and the city is not required to agree.

“If the city does not enter into a lease … the authority can’t come onto our property and use our infrastructure,” Martin said.

But even if the board is formed, any transition away from the current system — operated by JXN Water under federal oversight — must ultimately be approved by U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate. Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley, who chairs the Public Works Committee, said the city needs to better understand where Wingate stands and how he is thinking about a potential transition.

Watch video: Is your street going to be repaved? See nearly 600 Jackson streets planned

Additionally, the authority is charged to hire a president to lead the new entity, according to the law. But that person would not immediately take over operations. Instead, the president would serve as a deputy to JXN Water’s court-appointed manager, Ted Henifin, and work alongside the utility during a transition period until federal oversight ends.

Council members noted that hiring a president would take time and that the authority would still need to determine how to fund the position.

They also pointed to major unanswered questions, including how the authority would be funded, how debt would be handled and whether the system is ready for a transition at all. Jackson’s Chief Administrative Officer Pieter Teeuwissen also stressed that any transition would take time.

“There are a number of unknowns in this bill — both known and unknown,” Teeuwissen said “This isn’t something where a new entity is going to take over in a month or two. At best, you’re looking at a year-plus transition, and that’s assuming there’s no litigation or other challenges.”

Data centers in MS: Jackson City Council considers limits on data centers amid state boom

The discussion comes a day after Mayor John Horhn said it remains “up for discussion” whether the city will appoint members to the board before the May 1 deadline. When asked again after the meeting about his plans and what message he had for concerned residents, Horhn did not offer additional clarity.

“We continue to weigh our options going forward,” Horhn said to both questions.

• Mississippi State Auditor Shad White estimates that immigrants without legal status cost state taxpayers $100 million annually.
• The estimate is based on a conservative figure of 22,000 undocumented people living in Mississippi.
• The report calculates costs in three main areas: education ($25 million), health care ($77 million), and prisons ($1.7 million).
• The health care total includes $28 million for Medicaid services for U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents.
• The auditor’s report does not factor in taxes paid by undocumented immigrants.

When some lawmakers in the Mississippi Legislature took their immigration bills to the floor this session, a question emerged among opponents. Are these measures really necessary?

Mississippi has a smaller population of immigrants than its other southeastern counterparts, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and the state has mainly remained in the background as its neighbors have been targeted by task force raids.

The lack of federal attention to the Magnolia State hasn’t stopped many Republican lawmakers and state officials, including State Auditor Shad White, from maintaining that immigration without legal permission presents a major threat to Mississippi. At the crux of White’s argument for stronger local and national enforcement is money. One hundred million dollars, to be specific.

That amount, $100 million, is what White said immigrants without legal status in the country cost Mississippi taxpayers every year. He explained the math behind the total and its significance to residents in an April 22 interview with the Clarion Ledger.

The first piece of the puzzle was to estimate the number of people living in the state without legal status, White said, a calculation guided by data from the U.S. Census and Department of Homeland Security.

“We settled on 22,000 illegal immigrants living in Mississippi,” he said. “It’s important to mention that that is a very, very conservative estimate. It’s the lower bound of what that number could be.”

Both the number of immigrants in the country illegally and the amount that they cost taxpayers could be, and likely are, greater than the estimate, White said. The numbers have also almost definitely changed since the auditor’s office first researched and compiled the report at the end of 2024.

When the office reached a consensus on the number of people, White said, analysts looked at three major cost buckets: education, health care and prisons. These areas were the ones with the largest potential price tags, he said.

Every child, regardless of immigration status, is entitled to a public education in the United States. The office estimated that around 2,500 children, roughly 0.57% of the total public enrollment last school year, were in the country without legal status.

The cost for these students, based on the Mississippi Student Funding Formula approved in 2024, is $17 million. On top of that, White said, many of these children would likely receive funding supplements for low-income students and English language learners.

The total taxpayer cost in education totals around $25 million a year, the report stated. Neither the report nor White detailed how analysts determined the number of students who would qualify as low-income or English language learners.

The health care total is likely an even more conservative number, White said, in part because the office didn’t have enough data to make an estimate as comprehensive as he would have preferred.

“If you walked into an emergency room right now, you’re going to be treated. It doesn’t matter who you are,” he said. “Add onto that the cost of anyone who is an illegal immigrant mother who walks into a hospital and gives birth. Of course, we’re going to treat her, but that cost will flow back to taxpayers.”

Citing numbers from health policy organization KFF (formerly known as Kaiser Family Foundation), the report stated that those births would likely cost around $4 million each year. Emergency room visits would probably total around $45 million annually, assuming about half of the undocumented population goes to the ER once a year.

The total estimate in the health care section of the report is $77 million, because it includes approximately $28 million spent providing Medicaid services to the U.S. citizen children of immigrants without legal status. Without the Medicaid treatment for U.S. citizens, the health care cost is around $49 million.

More on immigration: Mississippi legislature moves immigration bills to work with ICE

The final area is criminal justice, White explained, which used detention data collected from prisons and jails to estimate that 79 incarcerated people did not have legal status in the country. Multiplied by the daily cost of incarcerating a person in Mississippi, the report stated that taxpayers would contribute around $1.7 million every year to keeping them in jail.

This amount is also likely much higher, White said, because the office didn’t have the means to include the costs incurred before a person goes to prison.

“When we looked at the prison costs, we did not look into the cost of investigating crimes committed by illegal immigrants,” he said. “The cost of the criminal investigation was some non-zero number, we just don’t know what it was.”

When the report as first released, White recounted, some people told him that it should have included the amount that undocumented immigrants contribute in local and state taxes. He dismissed that as people “trying to distract from the larger point” that people without legal status “drive costs higher.”