Barbara Clark-Hooper is a long-time resident of the Dark Branch community in Brunswick County — a primarily Black neighborhood near Winnabow. She’s been there for 50 years, and her well water isn’t safe to drink.
“Sometimes it smells like boiled eggs, and it’s rusty. And we have to always use stuff to try to, you know, keep the rust out,” she said.
She says she relies on bottled water for drinking. Other neighbors use water softeners and filters to clean the water that goes through their pipes — some residents say their filters turn from white to a vibrant, rusty orange after just a month’s use, and have to be replaced.
That’s why the county’s NAACP has been organizing to ask the Brunswick officials to put these residents on county water. President Carl Parker got nearly 300 people to sign a petition demanding water and sewer hookups, and residents also went to a Brunswick County Commissioners meeting asking for help…