FEMA head: 'Too early to tell' when Mississippi water crisis will end

• FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said it is 'too early to tell' when the water crisis will end.
• President Biden this week called on Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves 'to act.'

WASHINGTON – The of head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency acknowledged Sunday that officials are not yet certain how long it will take to fix the water crisis in Mississippi nearly a week after state officials declared an emergency.

"It's still too early to tell,"  FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday in response to a question about when residents could expect clean drinking water. "We have a lot more to learn about what it's going to take to get that plant up and running."

The water supply in Mississippi's capital city, Jackson, remained unsafe for its 150,000 residents to drink or brush their teeth this week after water treatment pumps failed, exacerbating a persistent water crisis in the city. 

Excessive rainfall had doused Jackson and central Mississippi throughout August, and flooding of the Pearl River caused the pumps to fail, officials said. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who lives in Jackson, announced a state of emergency early last week and warned residents to not drink the water. 

Criswell said that the response to the crisis would take place in phases and that "the focus right now is making sure we can get bottled water out."

President Joe Biden this past week said that the federal government had offered "every single thing available to Mississippi" and said that Reeves, a Republican, "has to act." Pressed on Friday about what Biden meant, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed to "funding there that the state can tap into for infrastructure needs."

 Contributing: Ashley R. Williams, Celina Tebor