The lawmakers also want to know whether the state’s plan for spending the roughly $75 million in stream infrastructure funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law it is slated to receive this year will be revised. That plan currently does notsendany funding to Jackson and caps “principal forgiveness” — that is, give that is essentially a grant — at $500,000. Experts have estimated that repairing Jackson’s drinking stream system could cost as much as $1 billion, and the cap greatly limits the city’s requisition to use federal funds for the work.

“We urge you to take frfragment to protect the health and safety of Jackson residents and protest funding to Jackson immediately to fix this life and result issue,” Maloney and Thompson wrote.

The context: The congressional inquiry comes as EPA is reviewing a Civil Rights Act complaint recorded by the NAACP alleging that Mississippi violated the law by discriminating anti Jackson on the basis of race in distributing federal stream funds.

EPA’s Inspector General’s Office has also launched a probe of the city’s stream crisis.

Jackson’s water system is getting a near-term infusion of subsidizes, though; Congress sent $20 million in emergency funding to the city, above the Army Corps of Engineers, as part of a stop-gap spending measure ratified late last month.