{"id":300071,"date":"2017-03-22T01:45:08","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T00:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/while-one-louisiana-towns-lead-tainted-water-system-is-replaced-dozens-of-others-deteriorate\/"},"modified":"2017-03-22T01:45:08","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T00:45:08","slug":"while-one-louisiana-towns-lead-tainted-water-system-is-replaced-dozens-of-others-deteriorate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/while-one-louisiana-towns-lead-tainted-water-system-is-replaced-dozens-of-others-deteriorate\/","title":{"rendered":"While One Louisiana Town&#039;s Lead-Tainted Water System Is Replaced, Dozens of Others Deteriorate"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2017_03\/2017_0321dm_01.jpg\" alt=\"St. Joseph, Louisiana, resident Lee Richardson gets discolored water from his tap. (Photo: Julie Dermansky) \" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">St. Joseph, Louisiana, resident Lee Richardson gets discolored water from his tap. (Photo: Julie Dermansky) <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>For years the discolored water delivered to the northern Louisiana delta town of\u00a0St.\u00a0Joseph resembled what one would expect to find in a third-world country.\u00a0But it wasn&#8217;t until\u00a0high levels of lead were discovered in the town&#8217;s municipal water system that work began to\u00a0replace\u00a0it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On March 6,\u00a0Louisiana Gov. John Bell Edwards, along with local officials and state lawmakers,\u00a0attended a groundbreaking ceremony for St. Joseph&#8217;s new water system,\u00a0wielding\u00a0symbolic golden shovels in the parking lot next to\u00a0city\u00a0hall.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2017_03\/2017_0321dm_02.jpg\" alt=\"Gov. John Bell Edwards, front and third from right, at the groundbreaking ceremony in St. Joseph, Louisiana, for the new municipal water system. (Photo: Julie Dermansky)\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">Gov. John Bell Edwards, front and third from right, at the groundbreaking ceremony in St. Joseph, Louisiana, for the new municipal water system. (Photo: Julie Dermansky)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8CUCgi29zi4\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"420\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After tests found lead in the water of city hall and some of the town&#8217;s homes, Gov. Edwards made an\u00a0emergency health proclamation on December 16, 2016, enabling a fast-tracked replacement of St.\u00a0Joseph&#8217;s\u00a0water\u00a0system.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2017_03\/2017_0321dm_03.jpg\" alt=\"St. Joseph, Louisiana, City Hall. (Photo: Julie Dermansky) \" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">St. Joseph, Louisiana, City Hall. (Photo: Julie Dermansky) <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2017_03\/2017_0321dm_04.jpg\" alt=\"Street in St. Joseph where construction to replace the municipal water pipes is underway. (Photo: Julie Dermansky)\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">Street in St. Joseph where construction to replace the municipal water pipes is underway. (Photo: Julie Dermansky)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The state began making three liters of water per day available for each of the town&#8217;s residents. It also came up with $8 million in funding and expedited the project to replace the municipal water system, which is expected to be operational by\u00a0September.<\/p>\n<p>For the majority-African American\u00a0town of\u00a0some\u00a01,100 people, relief from the ongoing water crisis couldn&#8217;t come soon enough. For almost a decade,\u00a0residents, 33 percent of which live in poverty, have complained about the discolored, dirty water that comes out of their\u00a0taps.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>State-issued bottled water has been replaced with potable water in\u00a0large\u00a0storage tanks, known as &#8220;water\u00a0buffaloes,&#8221;\u00a0stationed around\u00a0town,\u00a0where residents can fill up containers\u00a0with\u00a0water.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2017_03\/2017_0321dm_05.jpg\" alt=\"Wanda and Roy Bowman, both local ministers in St. Joseph, collecting clean water to deliver to their neighbors who are not able to gather it themselves. (Photo: Julie Dermansky)\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">Wanda and Roy Bowman, both local ministers in St. Joseph,&#8230;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/39923-while-one-louisiana-town-s-lead-tainted-water-system-is-replaced-dozens-of-others-deteriorate\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>St. Joseph, Louisiana, resident Lee Richardson gets discolored water from his tap. (Photo: Julie Dermansky) For years the discolored water delivered to the northern Louisiana delta town of\u00a0St.\u00a0Joseph resembled what one would expect to find in a third-world country.\u00a0But it wasn&#8217;t until\u00a0high levels of lead were discovered in the town&#8217;s municipal water system that work [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":300072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-300071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}