Engineering PhD student Jeannie Purchase sets out to help a couple in rural South Carolina who have endured dirty tap water for a decade.

Jeannie M. Purchase is a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Jeannie received her bachelor’s degree from Clemson University in Biosystems Engineering and her master's from Virginia Tech in Construction Engineering and Management. Her research focuses on examining the efficacy of point-of-use and point-of-entry filters when exposed extreme corrosion conditions and investigating the barriers hindering the widespread adoption of these technologies in at-risk communities. Her interdisciplinary work is at the intersection of citizen science, water quality, remediation, and public health. Through her research, Jeannie collaborates with residents to pursue solutions community-based problems. Jeannie switched between engineering disciplines in pursuit of finding ways to better serve communities through effective communication and collaboration when designing solutions to relevant everyday problems. She believes that it is important for engineers to communicate and engage with the community to understand their needs. Jeannie loves to teach, mentor and inspire students, and work with communities like Denmark, SC.

This story originally aired on August 2, 2019 in an episode titled “Saving The World.”

Story Transcript

I first met Ms. Pauline Ray Brown and Eugene Smith in September of 2017.  I had first heard their story in my Engineering Ethics in the Public class and Dr. Edwards offer students an opportunity to visit Denmark, South Carolina on a family trip. 

I volunteered to go mainly because I was nosy.  The story was so bizarre that I wanted to see it for myself.  Ms. Paula and Eugene are an African-American couple in their seventies and they have been complaining about their bad water issues for the past ten years. They have been collecting over 40 water samples, jars of dirty, smelly water from their taps labeled with dates and times since 2009, each a sealed time capsule waiting for the day when someone would listen. 

They drive 20 miles roundtrip to Healing Springs to fill up dozens of water jugs to use for washing their hair, rinsing dishes, brushing their teeth and cooking.  They have collected pictures and high-priced water bills, newspaper articles, letters to state reps, lawyers’ Cease and Desist statements, health records and even a consent order between Denmark and the state all in one binder, bulging with so much information in it it’s bursting at the seams. 

But the question that baffles me is how do you have bad and expensive water for ten years and nobody is doing anything about it?  The people in the town are so resigned to their fate they don’t even fight it anymore.  I had to see this for myself.  

But when we arrived, I wasn’t quite prepared.  Despite their high poverty rates, Denmark was not in ruins.  Paula and Eugene had this nice, clean, ranch-style home overflowing with Southern hospitality. They had this beautiful china cabinet across from the formal dining room table that no one actually eats at.  They also had a formal sitting room that no one actually sits in with that couch that typically has plastic on it so you don’t mess it up, but in this case they had a sheet.  They also had small black figurines of musicians and angels just placed carefully throughout the house. 

Their house, it felt like home.  They felt like grandparents I never met before. 

Ms. Paula cooked us this huge dinner of fried fish, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, rolls and cake, and when you're finished eating she made sure you got more food than you had space for. 

Dr. Edwards mentioned how good the greens were and asked her what they were seasoned with and she was like, “Oh, just some bacon grease,” but I knew it had to be something like that.  It had to be more than herbs because there was nothing healthy about those greens.  It had to be some turkey neck, some pig feet or bacon. 

Paula and Eugene were just this loving couple and their house was filled with joy and stories and love in abundance for all of us, but they just had bad and overpriced water and learned to live with that. 

I adopted Denmark for my class study after the trip and I went through that binder that were all the records Paula and Eugene collected.  I was looking for evidence of historical documents to give some context to this injustice they experienced, but when it came to writing up my findings I began to freeze because I wasn’t writing a summary of Denmark’s water history.  I was putting pieces together to create it. 

But who was I to create that history?  I’m just a 24-year-old engineering PhD student.  Of course I spent hours and months doing research on this but, still, ten years ago when all of this began I was just 14 years old, a freshman, ninth grader at Cedar Grove High School in Southeast Atlanta when Paula and Eugene first started noticing brown and stinky water from their taps. Who was I to write up their history? 

As a kid, I didn’t even grow up in Denmark.  Did I have the right?  I questioned whether or not I was even doing the right thing.  It was an ethics class after all. 

But what bothers me is that 14-year-old me wouldn’t have questioned it at all.  I was a feisty little thing who would have helped these people no matter the cost.  I wouldn’t have known how to help and nor would I had the power to do anything about it, but 24-year-old me has been trained as an engineer for the past seven years where engineers must be objective and impartial.  We must present facts with hard evidence.  We leave out opinions and minimize emotions because emotions make you biased.  And if you're biased, you jeopardize your credibility.  Essentially, I think that we’re taught to minimize our humanity.

But the real question is was I too emotionally involved?  Was this ethical?  As you can see, I struggled.  I struggled to be objective as possible.  I wanted to try to give the bad guys in this saga the benefit of the doubt while still honoring these citizens’ very harsh reality.  But this responsibility seems so great and I was so young, like so over my head. 

But I am a part of the Virginia Tech team that worked with Denmark residents to uncover the use of a pesticide HaloSan that was being used to treat their wells.  It was used illegally and is not approved for drinking water and they've been using this pesticide for the past ten years, the exact same time Paula and Eugene first started believing that their water was making them sick.  But we got to help prove that after all these years they weren’t crazy. 

Last fall, we went to Minneapolis, Minnesota and we were asked to present on our work that we've done in Denmark, Flint, and other communities.  We also accepted award for community engagement that we've done in these places. 

When they first told me we were going on the trip and we were going with President Sands and we were taking the HokieBird, I was really excited.  But I was a little confused like why are we taking the mascot?  I’m all here for this school spirit thing but do we really need that big bird costume? 

But the HokieBird is not just the university mascot.  It is the university’s private jet.  It’s a plane.  So I was excited.  It’s a plane that’s probably most frequently used to recruit football players but your girl was elated, probably a little too excited because my mom was like, “Calm down.  Don’t act like you've never been anywhere before.”

“But, well, Mom, I never met President Sands before and I’m darn sure ain’t been nowhere on no private jet so I’m going to have me a good old time.  Don’t worry, though, I’m going to send you pictures.” 

Our presentation was amazing and compelling.  And the best part was that Paula and Eugene got to go and present with us.  They got to really share in the entire experience.  They spent a couple of days in Blacksburg, at the Inn at VT, and they got to speak with the new ethics class and we had this awesome potluck for them. 

They were catered to by everyone around them.  President Sands personally went to go get Ms. Brown a chair when she got tired of standing and Dr. Edwards was running back and forth to get them anything they wanted from the minibar on the plane, except for alcohol, of course.  They wanted to make sure I let you all know that part. 

Paula and Eugene were truly the guests of honor, as they should be.  On top of that, after we got back that night, I took them to their favorite restaurant Red Lobster after we got back.  I don't know what happened but, for some reason, the waiter thought it was their anniversary and they got free ice cream and cake at dinner.  It was like the perfect ending to the most amazing day. 

They were going home the next morning and so I asked Paula and Eugene, “What was your favorite part of the trip?”

You know what they said?  The shower. 

“What?  The shower?”  I tried to hide the shock on my face as they continued to talk about this water.  It was in this moment of fun and fellowship and laughs that I realized that the best part of the trip was the shower.  It was this warm, clean ability to wash and the peace that they had after three days of not having to second guess what was coming out of the tap. 

That night, I cried myself to sleep because I can’t fix their water.  Then it dawned on me.  They weren’t asking me to be perfect, to craft their history, primed and polished.  They just wanted someone to listen and to walk with them on their journey, to share with them what I do know and provide clarity where I can. 

But I was so concerned about being so young and inexperienced and feeling under qualified, even though I am, as I take on something so much bigger than myself, but I just can’t afford to do that anymore.  To question myself, to freeze, to shrink back and wait for someone who is more fit to do this, because Paula and Eugene they already had to wait ten years for a 14-year-old girl to grow up.