Something in the Water:
Too poor
for clean running water?
Janine Zeitlin, [email protected] 9:34 a.m. ET Oct. 27, 2017 | Updated 9:13 a.m. ET Jan. 25, 2018
There’s a place where dirty water flows into people’s homes. Some drink it. Others wouldn’t dare. To those, the water is unfit to even cook with or brush their teeth. But they must use it to wash their clothes, their dishes, their kids.
The people of Charleston Park are getting sick: stomach cramps, diarrhea, nausea, rashes. Cancer is a worry. They blame the water. It’s been that way for decades and little is being done about it.
Wilhelmina Pontoon’s 9-year-old son called it “doo-doo” water.
Frank Neal, 78, stopped drinking his water long ago. In the '90s, he took it to be tested. Through a microscope, he spotted peculiar strands “just strokin’ in there, little short things,” he recalled. “It was alive.” His water wasn’t fit to drink, they told him. “I can’t remember the names of the stuff but none of those names were good.”
?
Charleston Park resident Ella Christmas displays a scar left from a rash she had on and off for 10 years. She believes it was caused by her well water. She believes race is a factor as to why the government has not found a solution to the water problems of Charleston Park. (Photo: Andrew West/The News-Press)