“Troubled Water,” an investigation into drinking water contamination in communities across the country, is the 2017 project of the Carnegie-Knight News21 program, a national multimedia reporting project produced by top journalism students and graduates. Each year, students selected into the program report in-depth on a topic of national importance. This year, 29 journalism students from […]
PHOENIX – Patsy Oliver wanted the white picket fence dream, so the single mother jumped at the chance to to move to the Carver Terrace subdivision in Texarkana, Texas, where she could have a yard and garden. “It was an affluent, black neighborhood. Everybody wanted to live in Carver Terrace,” said Bess Gamble-Williams, Oliver’s daughter […]
NEWARK, N.J. – When Kim Gaddy’s godson got lead poisoning from ingesting paint chips, she said he suffered irreversible brain damage that affected his memory and academic performance. That made Gaddy, then a member of the school board in Newark, New Jersey, turn her attention toward the place where children spend most of their days. […]
WAYCROSS, Ga. – Janet McMahan has a message for southeast Georgia, and it is the one printed on her T-shirt: “No cure until you stop the cause, test your water, get a filter.” In 2014, McMahan became committed to improving water quality after she lost her 28-year-old son to a rare form of cancer she […]
ALBANY, N.Y. – Doctors twice notified Lori Clark’s family that they expected her to die. Clark, a project manager who lives in upstate New York, was placed in a chemically induced coma for 43 days after she was diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease in 2011. She initially thought she had the flu and delayed seeing a […]
PHOENIX – Dolores Escobar takes a 30-minute bus ride every Sunday from her house to the closest water-vending machine and carries eight empty gallon jugs with her to refill them. During hot seasons, she travels twice a week. She spends nearly $50 a month on the water, plus her bus tickets. The Phoenix resident said […]
MILWAUKEE – When Milwaukee native Tory Lowe found out about the lead service lines running through Milwaukee, he took a different approach to help spread the word that the water is unsafe to consume. Along with producer Godzilla and rapper Eric “EP” Perkins, they formed The Midwest Connect and wrote a song titled “Don’t Drink […]
WAUKESHA, Wisc. – The city of Waukesha has a radium problem, and it’s looking to Lake Michigan for a solution. Although talks of drawing water from nearby Lake Michigan began in 2002, Waukesha has struggled with radium contamination since the late 1970s when the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the acceptable limit for radium in public […]
EAST CHICAGO, Ind. – Growing up in the Calumet neighborhood of East Chicago, Maritza Lopez, 54, has experienced a significant number of health issues that she believes have been a result of living in a city that has lead-contaminated drinking water. She said she lives in “ground zero.” East Chicago is populated with mostly low-income […]
In the U.S., it’s often a case of the bigger the system, the better the drinking water quality. Most water systems in the U.S. are small and serve 3,300 people or less. These smaller systems may be numerous, but they only serve 7 percent of the population. The vast majority of Americans get their water from larger systems. Smaller […]