It’s inevitable these days that any urban calamity immediately becomes a progressive parable of systemic racism and “anti-government ideology,” as one columnist put it. That’s been the media spin after last week’s failure of a water treatment plant in Jackson, Miss., but the truth isn’t that simple. This is another local government failure of the kind that is becoming all too common in America’s cities.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said Monday that “we have returned water pressure to the city,” but Jackson residents suffered a week without a reliable water supply after flooding of the Pearl River overwhelmed the 30-year-old O.B. Curtis water treatment plant. Much of the blame belongs to chronic mismanagement by elected officials in the city of about 150,000, which is also the state capital.