Dirty Water Supplies 'Poisoning Public Trust'

Flint Water Scandal Tip Of Iceberg

As you drive into St Joseph in northeastern Louisiana, close to the Mississippi river, the rusty water tower overshadowing the town, is a sign of things to come.

A nearby road is flooded. We're told someone has hit a fire hydrant with a lawnmower.

It seems innocuous, but it is part of a much bigger problem here - ageing pipes, a creaking infrastructure and brown coloured water so thick with iron sediment, most people are too scared to drink it, cook with it, or bathe in it. 

Residents tell me it's been like this for a decade.

More than a third of the people are living below the poverty line, but they depend on bottled water.

I meet 59-year-old Betty, a warm, welcoming woman with a broad smile.

She picks up a bottle of bleach and says: "I add two drops to my bath." She's hopes it will kill bacteria.

A brain-eating amoeba has been discovered in Louisiana's water supplies. People in the state are nervous.

Around the corner, I meet Carmen Bates sitting on a porch in the searing heat.

She tells me: "There are children getting sick, they have rashes." 

Excessive limits of iron and manganese have been found in St Joseph's water.

The Environmental Protection Agency insist it's still safe to drink, the problem just aesthetic.

But few will risk it - even the town's mayor, Edward Brown, says he won't touch it.

The lead-tainted water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has eroded public trust across America and the water systems need urgent repairs.

It is a microcosm of a much wider catastrophe - poor communities exposed to dirty water, with little change in sight.

At Virginia Tech University I meet the pioneering professor Marc Edwards who helped uncover the poisoned water in Flint.

"There are definitely other Flints unfolding... because we're human, we screw things up," he says.

His latest focus is private wells.

Around 16% of Americans rely on them he says, and they've discovered the same levels of lead they saw in Flint.

His lab is packed with samples from New Orleans, New York State and Virginia, all sent in by worried homeowners following the Flint scandal. But this is a team of just 25 people.

They're passionate and persistent, but the scale of the problem is overwhelming.

By Cordelia Lynch, US Correspondent/Photo: Sky News