This is the fourth in our weeklong series "Poverty & the Environment in North Carolina." This entry was excerpted from a longer article by Hope Taylor-Guevara, Director of Clean Water for North Carolina based in Asheville. Click here to read the full article.

When Karen Brooks of West Gastonia learned that her drinking water well was contaminated with drycleaning solvents, she and her neighbors had very few options. For most residents, the $2,000 for hooking up to the public water system was beyond reach. Those that did hook up early were stunned to learn that any hookups before official State approval were not eligible for reimbursement. Residents are faced with the possible loss of water service if they can’t pay.

Dozens of times a year, such scenarios play out across North Carolina—because there is no law or regulation that ensures that safe drinking water is a human right for all of us.

As Clean Water for North Carolina has found in working with communities across the state, people with the lowest incomes are the least likely to know of nearby contaminated sites or other possible threats to their water, the least likely to test their private wells or know how to get state or local agencies to help with testing, and the least likely to get access to a safe replacement water supply when contamination is found.

2006 is the year to protect the right to safe water for NC’s vulnerable well-users. There is a productive and affordable solution to this problem that is gathering momentum, and, with help from you and all your NC neighbors who depend on well water, we can make it happen during this year’s legislative session—a bill that would create an Emergency Drinking Water Fund, provide access to testing for current and new wells, and require notification of known contamination problems.

Speak up this year to ensure right to safe drinking water for all North Carolinians, including those who are most vulnerable to environmental injustices of many kinds because they are poor, are communities of color or live in rural areas.

Click here to read the full article.