"ST. JOSEPH, Louisiana – On a hot delta day, Roy Bowman fills a gallon jug from an Army green trailer-mounted water tank. All year, Bowman and his neighbors in this crushingly poor, mostly African American town perched on the west bank of the Mississippi River have gotten their water this way.

Brown and gritty, the city’s water had been fouled by deteriorating pipelines and treatment equipment for years; parts of the system were more than a century old. But last year, tests discovered a worse problem: The drinking water was loaded with high concentrations of lead, the same brain-damaging contaminant that poisoned people in Flint, Michigan.

Suddenly, an inconvenience became an emergency. Don’t drink the water or cook with it, state officials warned. The Louisiana National Guard brought in water tanks as a stopgap. The state stepped in to fund a new $9 million water system.

It was a calamity caused by carelessness – neglect of a worsening water problem, a small town and its people."

Randy Lee Loftis reports for Reveal November 9, 2017. [2]