DEMARK, SOUTH CAROLINA — We have a mayor who is refusing to allow Dr. Edwards and his Virginia Tech team to come in and sample and test our wells. Dr. Edwards found contamination in our water, high levels of iron and high levels of lead in some parts of the city (300 parts per billion). The EPA isn’t listening to us. They allow homes to have a certain number of these contaminants in their water, high levels of manganese, e-coli. We found illegal dumping sites where they are dumping raw sewage illegally into a river. It is a big huge concern. And, because our local mayor and city council has a 65% tax rate on our water, we are paying 65% more on our water that we can’t drink or use.
We have an out of touch politician running our city who is more concerned about protecting DHEC (South Carolina’s Dept. of Health and Environmental Control) than he is about his own citizens. We have citizens who travel 7-10 miles to haul water as if we were in Africa, with jugs in their cars to an area we call Healing Springs. Over 80% of our citizens do not drink the water. They either go to Healing Springs, or for those that cannot afford it, buy bottled water. Unfortunately, that huge group of people who cannot afford to do either are reduced to drinking this water. They and our children are getting sick. People are dying. People have skin and rash issues. We just learned that DHEC is not required to test for lead in our schools. We need to do something about this.
We are not going to stop until this is resolved. Test our wells by Dr. Edwards and his Tech team! We want people to be aware of what’s happening in small rural towns. We are standing up for our rights and will not back down.
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