In the 20 years since she moved to Florence, South Carolina, Carolyn McMillan said she has avoided drinking tap water at home.
She uses bottled water for drinking or cooking.
“No other choice,” said McMillan, who is Black. Tap water “has no taste. I tried a long time ago. Once. That was enough. Sometimes it is cloudy. It’s smelly, smelly. I boiled water to cook. It’s a mess.”
McMillan, from Brooklyn, New York, says he has managed his water this way for so long that it has become routine, like saying your prayers before bed.
“It’s frustrating,” she added. “And I know that it has made people around here sick. It is a problem for many of us. “
The scarcity of drinking water in much of Florence, which is 47% black, located about an hour northwest of the coastal city of Myrtle Beach, illustrates a national environmental crisis in America, especially for blacks in low-income rural communities.
Leo Woodberry, pastor of the Kingdom Living Temple in Florence, is not willing to wait any longer for government help and has launched a crusade to make drinking water in his community – out of nowhere.
Woodberry combined the funds that were saved and the money that was raised to purchase four solar hydropanels for $ 20,000 that are placed around his church. The technology uses sunlight and air to produce clean water.
He calls it “water from the heavens”.
“This is important because blacks were beaten and attacked on many fronts,” said Woodberry. “We are hit hardest by Covid-19. Forty percent of black companies that have closed since the pandemic are not coming back. We are still being shot on the streets and in our homes. Clean water in communities of color shouldn’t be a problem, but it is. There is a lot we are dealing with, and being able to come up with community-based solutions is important to show that we can move forward. “
The long saga of Flint, Michigan, to obtain clean, pristine water has caught national attention – and led to nine criminal charges, including one against former Michigan governor Rick Snyder. But while the spotlight was on Flint, countless communities across the country were experiencing similar or worse conditions – and still are.
Florence residents are often advised to boil water for at least a minute to ensure their safety. City officials said there was no confirmed contamination of the system. But its infrastructure is compromised, leading to frequent water cuts or loss of pressure, which raises the potential for bacteriological contamination, officials at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control said.
The department requires the city to issue boiling water warnings when an event occurs that allows bacteria to enter the water system. This happens very often, residents say.
Woodberry’s desperation to provide Florence with clean water was boosted when Xavier Boatright of the environmental organization All Aboard For Justice attended a solar hydropanel demonstration in Denmark, South Carolina. It was led by Colin Goddard of Source Global, a company of renewable energy that produces solar-powered hydropanels that use sunlight with technology to draw water from moisture in the air. Each panel is about 1.2 m by 2.5 m and can hold up to 30 liters of water. The panels store and mineralize the water, which is then filtered and flows to the homes or businesses to which it is connected.
Boatright introduced Woodberry to Goddard and the pastor soon started partnerships with All Aboard for Justice and New Alpha Community Development Corp. Four hydropanels are connected to the church and are producing 120 liters of water per day. The goal will be to use hydropanels and other technologies to provide clean water for Florence.
Source Global CEO Cody Friesen said that drinking water problems in America are “a broken infrastructure, a lack of transparency in what you are consuming and a lack of convenience.”
“There are many, many people who have been left behind on a generational basis who are poorly served,” he said. “Black communities are much more likely to have problems with their drinking water. The question is: can we solve difficult problems and create environmental justice with technology, create technology for social equality, create technology to elevate people? This is what makes what we do so rewarding. “
It is necessary.
In February, a winter storm in Jackson, Mississippi, brought freezing temperatures, affecting infrastructure, crushing water treatment plants, forcing a boil-up warning in the capital and shutting off the water supply. The warning for the crowded city was lifted last week.
“Jackson is a scam,” said Friesen. Federal government spending on infrastructure is “working well in many major cities, but this belies the reality of many places where it is not working.”
Like Florence.
“And it is because we are black,” said Irene Fulmore, pastor of the Cristo Rei Liberation Ministry in nearby Timmonsville.
The water in your city is so bad because of a bad water treatment facility that now receives water from Florence, which by itself is not doing very well in the water department.
“We received less funding to solve our problems. We cannot drink or use this water. It is brown and smelly. We get bottled water from the jugs. It is sad because there is nothing being done. “
Woodberry is doing something. “He’s a hero,” said Friesen.
Since 2014, Woodberry has been maneuvering to address water concerns in his city. The city passed a bill to move forward with renewable energy. and his connection to Source Global – and President Joe Biden’s commitment to “environmental justice” – gives him hope that substantial changes will occur.
The hydropanels in your church are placed prominently, allowing community members to see them in action. Woodberry said he will lead a campaign to raise money to secure many more panels for the hardest hit areas.
He also plans to buy land in Brittons Neck, a mostly black community that uses well water. When hurricanes or major storms hit the state, the well’s water is contaminated with pesticides and septic tank waste, among other toxic materials.
“We want to build a water garden there for that community that uses well water because they don’t have the money to enter the rural water system,” said Woodberry. “And it will create jobs. This is the work of the Bible. It says: ‘Replenish the earth.’ I was describing the original recycling program. “
Biden’s executive order in January promised to blame sources of pollution that “disproportionately harm color and low-income communities.”
Woodberry said this was an important step.
“For us, this is a sustainable project,” he said. “As long as there is sun and moisture in the air, we can produce clean water. This is an example of the community-based solutions that the Biden administration should support. “
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, from 2010 to 2016, drinking water systems that regularly violated the law for not meeting drinking water standards were 40 percent more likely to serve people of color.
In addition, the environmental advocacy group, Clean Water Action, said 75 percent of black Americans are more likely to live near polluting facilities. A survey conducted last year by The Undefeated and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that blacks are much more likely than whites to report disparities in environmental exposures (70 percent versus 40 percent) and below standard medical care levels ( 54 percent versus 26 percent) as contributing factors to health problems.
Cynthia Gaskins, another black resident in Florence, said she did not trust the water in her home. She also did not consume tap water in the 20 years she lived there.
“I don’t even drink the water that comes out of my refrigerator filter,” she said. “I heard about this new water that Rev. Woodberry is helping to make. I’ll try. After all this time, it would be amazing to have clean water coming out of the tap. “
Source Global’s hydropanel water system is in 48 countries serving indigenous populations and many other places in the United States, including the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon and the Navajo Nation.
Friesen said the process for introducing hydropanel technology in different areas cannot be rushed. “It is about understanding the community,” he said. “Starting small to go big. Starting slow to go fast. Eventually, we want to bring hydropanels to the entire community. “
McMillan, a retired social worker, said it can be difficult to stop using bottled water after so long. “But Rev. Woodberry said to me, ‘When you try this water, you will forget all about bottled water. It’s so delicious. ‘ Hope so. We need this. We have needed this for a long time. “
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