Greenville's Brown Water/Holiday Inn Express Make the Washington Post!


Then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and front desk agent Brian Credeur at the Holiday Inn Express of Greenville March 10, 2008.

President Barack Obama's alarm at Greenville's brown water during his campaign trail stay at a Holiday Inn Express and Mayor Heather McTeer Hudson's attempt to get stimulus money to fix the problem was the focus of an Aug. 24 Washington Post article.

The Delta Dirt was present at Obama's March 10 visit. Read our version here. The Washinton Post's story begins:
"GREENVILLE, Miss. -- In the blur of his campaign, it was just another overnight stop: a Holiday Inn Express in Greenville, dead in the heart of this forsaken land called the Delta.

In the lobby, atop the front desk, a card in a plastic frame greeted guests. It served as an alert, a quaint warning of sorts: "You may be wondering why our water is brown -- it's the cypress tree roots, in the springs underground. Y'all can drink our water and bathe without fear. For no one lives longer than the folks around here."

Barack Obama passed the card on the way to his room. There, the bathroom sink and shower offered exactly what the card predicted: a stream of yellowish-brown water, to be found in every room. It came from a Greenville city well, which pumped the same alarming-looking water into all the homes and businesses in the area. City leaders and hotel employees emphasized that although it looked bad, the brown water met all federal and state safety standards, and that residents commonly drank it and bathed in it."

In a car ride with Obama, the mayor explained that "She hoped to get rid of the color with a filtration system that several American and foreign cities had used to take care of their own brown-water problems. But struggling Greenville had no money to pay for such a system, another complication in an array of infrastructure quandaries for which Hudson was hoping to obtain federal assistance."
The article goes on to tell of Hudson's frustration that government stimulus funds have yet to materialize for her city's wish list. There is nothing new here: Empty government promises matched by a desire for money that at any price could never be quenched.

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