KPLC 7 News, Lake Charles, LouisianaBeauregard Police Jurors hear about drinking water protection

Beauregard Police Jurors hear about drinking water protection

By Theresa Schmidt - bio | email

LAKE CHARLES, LA (KPLC) - A group of concerned citizens turned out for the Beauregard Police Jury meeting Tuesday night. They're hoping to persuade jurors to adopt measures to protect drinking water in that parish.

Clean drinking water is essential for good health. And once a drinking water source is polluted it's usually a lot harder to clean it up than it would have been to protect it in the first place. That's why concerned citizens like George Giltner hope Beauregard Police Jurors will adopt an ordinance to protect drinking water for the future. "We basically want to have good clean drinking water and if we had this ordinance then we'll have any type of pollution source at least 1000 feet from a water well that we use in the parish."

Jesse Means is a geologist with the State Department of Environmental Quality. He says a drinking water protection ordinance can help keep sources of drinking water safe. "It serves active public water wells for public water systems. Basically the intent of it is to safeguard the health, safety and the lives of the public by protecting groundwater from being contaminated."

There are many potential sources of contamination from leaking underground storage tanks to spills that occurred many years ago. The ordinance would apply to new potential sources of contamination. According to information provided by Means, cleaning up drinking water contamination is extremely expensive, complicated and time consuming. "We do suggest you get something on the books because right now there's nothing out there protecting those wells out there in your parish right now. Right now there's nothing keeping anybody from building or preventing someone from building say a chemical plant if they have the land right next to your water well."

Jurors and their attorney will study information from DEQ and revisit the issue in April. For more information on protecting drinking water call DEQ at 888-763-5424 or click here.

Another item on the Beauregard police jury agenda: Concerns about proposed water sales from Toledo Bend Lake to Texas and other states experiencing drought conditions. Jurors tabled taking a stand on that issue until they have more time to study it.