Clean Water for Charleston Park
Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” It happened recently in Lee County. On the last weekend of October 2017, the News-Press published an exposé about a drinking water quality problem in Charleston Park – a rural community of about 112 households, between Alva and LaBelle. Most people living there use wells to supply water to their homes. For decades, Lee County officials have known that water from these wells is filled with bacteria and nitrates, but the problem was never adequately addressed. The county has no legal obligation to solve problems with drinking water from private wells. After reading the exposé, a small number of people from various parts of the county were sufficiently concerned about this continuing problem that they contacted the News-Press reporter, Janine Zeitlin, who wrote most of the articles in the exposé....