Water, Water

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

Coastal residents can definitely relate to Coleridge on these lines from "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner." Flood waters destroyed virtually everything south of I-10, and in doing so created a drinking water emergency. In Pearlington, there was no city water system. Everyone used well water, and Katrina destroyed the pumps for those wells. The first step to normalcy (or the new normal) was to start replacing those pumps. FEMA was parking trailers by the hundreds in that field in Purvis while families by the hundreds still lived in tents because they had no basic services. FEMA required access to water and electricity before those families could get a trailer. University Baptist and CBF worked hard through the fall to help people get new pumps and get set up in their FEMA campers. We still have so far to go, but thanks to all of those efforts, the water crisis that has vastly improved in the past year.

Click here to read an account by John Earle of some of the work that went into establishing safe water supplies in Pearlington.