Good news to ensure good water.
The beautiful black water of the North Edisto River puts Orangeburg in the enviable position of a having a continuous and quality source of drinking water.
It is a resource generally taken for granted — except for thousands of people not served by a water system.
The Water Well Trust, the only national nonprofit helping low-income Americans get access to a clean, safe water supply, has announced that it is expanding from 13 to 16 the number of South Carolina counties eligible to receive assistance for drilling a new water well or rehabilitating an existing well.
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $140,000 matching grant to the Water Well Trust for a project to increase potable water availability to households in 13 rural South Carolina counties, including Orangeburg.
The USDA grant monies will provide long-term, low-interest loans to applicants seeking new or improved water wells in the 16-county area.
To be eligible to receive a WWT loan, an applicant must be the owner and occupant of the home as their primary residence.
The 2016 Non-Metropolitan median household income for South Carolina is $44,200.
The income criteria apply to both the applicant and all other occupants of the home.
Ask those people whether water is to be taken for granted.

Minister tackled over lack of free drinking water for school children.
The Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) has taken Education Minister Richard Bruton to task after he stated his officials were not aware of any school where pupils did not have access to a drinking water supply.
Mr Bruton made the comments in reply to a recent parliamentary question from Fianna Fáil education spokesman Thomas Byrne.
It triggered an immediate response from IHF policy manager Kathryn Reilly, who wrote to Mr Bruton challenging his assertion, and criticising what she sees as a lack of priority within his department to the issue.
Ms Reilly drew attention to research undertaken by the IHF among primary schools in 2015, which found water was not available free in 40pc of schools surveyed.
Meanwhile, some 47pc of schools had vending machines, where sugar-sweetened drinks were more freely available than free drinking water.
"This either means students are paying for bottled water or replacing water with less healthy options.
We do not believe that this is an acceptable situation and, of even greater concern, there seems to be the lack of awareness in the department of this situation," she wrote to the minister.
Ms Reilly also pointed out that, under the national obesity plan 2016-2025, ‘A Healthy Weight for Ireland’, the Department of Education has responsibility for the provision of ‘potable water’, otherwise known as drinking water, in all learning centres.
Irish Independent

Minister tackled over lack of free drinking water for school children.
A row has broken out over whether all schools are offering free drinking water to their pupils.
The Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) has taken Education Minister Richard Bruton to task after he stated his officials were not aware of any school where pupils did not have access to a drinking water supply.
Mr Bruton made the comments in reply to a recent parliamentary question from Fianna Fáil education spokesman Thomas Byrne.
It triggered an immediate response from IHF policy manager Kathryn Reilly, who wrote to Mr Bruton challenging his assertion, and criticising what she sees as a lack of priority within his department to the issue.
Ms Reilly drew attention to research undertaken by the IHF among primary schools in 2015, which found water was not available free in 40pc of schools surveyed.
Meanwhile, some 47pc of schools had vending machines, where sugar-sweetened drinks were more freely available than free drinking water.
"This either means students are paying for bottled water or replacing water with less healthy options.
We do not believe that this is an acceptable situation and, of even greater concern, there seems to be the lack of awareness in the department of this situation," she wrote to the minister.
Ms Reilly also pointed out that, under the national obesity plan 2016-2025, ‘A Healthy Weight for Ireland’, the Department of Education has responsibility for the provision of ‘potable water’, otherwise known as drinking water, in all learning centres.

For something necessary to life, water is often overlooked in our day-to-day lives.
Luckily for us, Charlotte Water is always thinking about the quality of the local water system.
Here are five reasons locals should love Charlotte Water.
Local Beer: Love your local Charlotte beer?
Well, Charlotte Water is the best pre-beer in town.
This is also one reason why “drink local” is so meaningful to the craft beer movement.
For more information on brewing with Charlotte Water, check out this helpful blog post.
Water Safety: Charlotte is a young city.
Since lead was banned in 1986, you don’t need to worry about lead.
Charlotte Water treats an average of 107 million gallons of drinking water and 80 million gallons of wastewater every day.

W.H.O report: Clean water fight still murky.
MORE than two billion people lack access to clean and safe drinking water, according to a new report released by the World Health Organisation.
Although significant progress to ensure access to drinking water has been achieved, there is still a long way to go to ensure its quality — deemed free from pollutants and safe for drinking.
While many countries like India have made it a top priority, many others haven’t been able to emphasise the issue yet,” said United Nations Children’s Fund water, sanitation and hygiene chief Sanjay Wijesekera.
Some 159 million people, the report said, rely on untreated water from lakes and streams.
This puts lives, especially of young children, at great risk.
“Every day, 800 children under the age of 5 die from waterborne diseases like diarrhoea.
While the global drop in open defaecation from 20 to 12 per cent between 2000 and 2015 is a welcome fact, the rate of decline, at just 0.7 per cent every year, puts pressure on governments to do more.
Still, some countries like Ethiopia have combatted the issue of open defaecation successfully.
Similarly, Panama’s capital city has achieved universal access to clean drinking water, but other sub-regions in the country remain marginalised.

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Madurai: Aadi amavasai was celebrated in the temples across the southern district as people paid obeisance to their ancestors by participating in special prayers, but there was a shortage of water for performing the rituals as well as drinking and bathing in many temples across the region. Lakhs of people offered prayers at the Rameswaram Sri Ramanathaswamy temple and took a dip in the sea while priests sitting in long rows performed the rituals for the devotees who took turns to sit before them. The temple opened as early as 3am on Sunday in view of the festival. Devotees who came in the afternoon found it difficult to walk in the hot sand as the vehicle parking facility was located 1km away. People also had to…

Vedanthi has decided to supply 25 litre water bottles to each of the families in the Gowdgere village. Santrupth G.R. Vedanthi, an Oman-based musician and student of the Indian School Muscat, whose second album Palasampada released in July, has decided to donate the proceeds from the sale of this album to set up a drinking water facility in Gowdgere, a village located on outskirts of Bengaluru, in the India state of Karnataka. Nearly 400 families are expected to benefit from this drinking water plant, which will take at least two months to set up. To help cope with the present drinking water issue, Vedanthi has decided to supply 25 litre water bottles to each of the families in the village. Vedanthi’s new album Palasampada is composed by Grammy award-winning musician Prakash Sontakke, who is one of the leading composers in the field of Hindustani classical and fusion music. One of the compositions is dedicated to India’s river Ganga. The Indian School Muscat student, who has been showing great promise in the field of music, has been using his talent for a bigger purpose since he was 11. The…

International human rights organisation CARE has denounced the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen, which is also suffering from a cholera epidemic, as "an absolute shame on humanity".
Wolfgang Jamann, the head of the NGO, raised alarm over the country’s deteriorating situation since March 2015 when Saudi-led forces launched a military operation in support of the government against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
READ MORE: UN blames Saudi-led coalition for deadly Yemen strikes "Thousands of civilians have died since the start of the conflict and millions more have been displaced inside the country," he told a news conference.
Jamann said "60 percent of the country is food insecure and over half the population is unable to access safe drinking water".
The war in Yemen has caused more than 8,000 deaths – mostly of civilians – since the coalition intervened, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
More than 44,500 people are estimated to have been wounded.
Cholera outbreak The situation in the country of some 27 million has been worsened by a massive outbreak of the bacterial infection cholera.
WHO: 5,000 new cases of cholera per day in Yemen More than 600,000 people are expected to contract cholera in Yemen this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on Sunday.
More than 370,000 people have fallen ill and 1,800 have died since late April in Yemen’s second cholera outbreak in less than a year, according to the ICRC and WHO.
According to the WHO, 5,000 new suspected cases of cholera are registered every day in Yemen, which is facing the world’s largest outbreak of the disease.

International human rights organisation CARE has denounced the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen, which is also suffering from a cholera epidemic, as "an absolute shame on humanity".
Wolfgang Jamann, the head of the NGO, raised alarm over the country’s deteriorating situation since March 2015 when Saudi-led forces launched a military operation in support of the government against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
READ MORE: UN blames Saudi-led coalition for deadly Yemen strikes "Thousands of civilians have died since the start of the conflict and millions more have been displaced inside the country," he told a news conference.
Jamann said "60 percent of the country is food insecure and over half the population is unable to access safe drinking water".
The war in Yemen has caused more than 8,000 deaths – mostly of civilians – since the coalition intervened, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
More than 44,500 people are estimated to have been wounded.
Cholera outbreak The situation in the country of some 27 million has been worsened by a massive outbreak of the bacterial infection cholera.
WHO: 5,000 new cases of cholera per day in Yemen More than 600,000 people are expected to contract cholera in Yemen this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on Sunday.
More than 370,000 people have fallen ill and 1,800 have died since late April in Yemen’s second cholera outbreak in less than a year, according to the ICRC and WHO.
According to the WHO, 5,000 new suspected cases of cholera are registered every day in Yemen, which is facing the world’s largest outbreak of the disease.