Must See Web TV: American Town in 2009 Without Running Water

With nearly 1 trillion dollars in stimulus money out there, the state of Miss. can’t figure out how to get hold of a mere 1 million to get water to its citizens? Would seem to me this is truly a shovels ready job – trenchers, pipes, labor are probably all readily available. The US government wants everybody to have health insurance – how about supplying a basic necessity like water to everybody first.

It is a race card ! who are we kidding.
We who pay for water, at least have the choice to do so, access is the effort here. Our government could cough up one million and give these people the opportunity to $$$ for drinking water.
Shame, shame, shame….

My family has been waiting for clean drinking water for over 10 years. We are not poor, and we are not black. There are over 300 people in my community without rural water. The problem lies in finding enough available money to go around. There are many rural communities in Arkansas waiting for water. Each year, a few get lucky. You would think some of the stimulus money would be available to us, but I can’t get the people paid to write the grants for this money to even return a phone call.

I just think that when we brag and boast about getting water to places like Equador, Sudan, Afghanistan, and we look at areas in Mississippi, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and other rural areas in the continental United States and the first thing out of everyone’s mouth is “You pay for water”, I personally think that is pathetic………If you think they won’t pay for the water, think again….the issue is the state not running the lines to the homes….then you can get them to pay….we drop 2 million dollar bombs daily………OH, by the way…..if you listen the wells have dried up.

Then you dig another well. They don’t last forever. People seem to think Stimulus=Entitlement programs. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Shame on ABC for not telling the whole story and making this about race. There are a lot of Americans of all races that do not have running water. Check out AZ and NM where residents have large water tanks in their pick ups that they fill up at the local convenience stores. I have relatives in TN and NC that do not have running water. For years, all cousins passing by would deliver jugs of water to a blind cousin whose town could no longer provide water. Hum, and he was white and many in NM and AZ are Native Americans and Hispanic. This is not just a poor, Black issue! Shame on ABC for not telling the whole story.

I’ve already e-mailed Barry Bryant with some ideas for reducing water need, like waterless toilets. I urged him to send a copy of this ABC-TV story to Obama with an appeal for help. Maybe a modern windmill would raise water from a deeper new well. I’m disappointed to not find a transcript so far, with that map shown; also some mapped information about the hydrology of Sunflower County. Where exactly are these 40 residents?

Uh, dig wells.
It makes no sense that the rest of us should have to pay $40 million bucks to get 40 people public water.
What the hell is wrong with these people?

They can’t drill a well? Very poor report, what happened to the well? Why cant it be drilled deeper??? very few questions raised or asked!!!!

I used to check groundwater levels for the feds in this area. You wouldn’t believe how many public water association wells were vandalized, debilitated, run down and not maintained by the residents. Where is the pride in ownership? Why move to an area that doesn’t have a good water supply? Why not take personal responsibility and help maintain a public well or drill a personal well? Why tinkle in your corn flakes?

I fail to see how ABC brought race into the story. One woman towards the end shared her personal opinion that it was because they were poor black, not ABC.
For those that think we pay for water, that is not true. We pay for water delivery and the staff, resources and equipment that make water delivery to the home possible. We pay for the maintenance of this equipment and the hard and soft costs associated with filter water. We do not pay for the water itself per se.
I dont claim to have the answers on how to get water to this community and think it is horrible that they have to live like they are camping. The infrastructure is the responsibility of the municipality, county, state and country to lay the the foundation to make water to this community possible; while the continued support of the delivery system should be the responsibility of the members of the community.

These people think they deserve the water for FREE when everyone else around there PAYS for water. Why do they deserve free water and no one else does.

What is the closest town to this community in Mississippi? Can anyone tell me? I don’t have much money but I do wish there was some way I could help.

I just returned from a church trip to help the poor in the Appalachian mountains. The local organization had trouble finding truly needy families. The family we helped was clearly more lazy than needy. Their two teenage sons played on their skateboards while our teenage children built them a trailer addition.
Why lift a finger to help yourself when all you need to do is get a gullible editor to help you whine to the federal government.
Come on ABC … you can do better than this. Don’t waste our time on this type of article, and don’t deny the people of Mississippi the satisfaction and education of solving their own problems.

As usual Americans show their true colors when it comes to issues of the haves and have nots. I don’t care if this is 40 people and they are purple with green hair. The point of the story is that here in America we have citizens who are without running water because their community cannot afford the cost of setting up the infrastructure. While we are funneling billions of dollars to other countries our citizens are going without. This is not about race, it is about citizens of this country.
Shame on all of you who chose to drag this down to race. Shameful.