Dirty Water: Danger From the Tap | CNN Digital Documentary

It’s not just Flint, Michigan. Bad water is more widespread than you think. Aging infrastructure is leaving thousands of rural communities vulnerable to contamination with no fix in sight. CNN travels to two of them.

Virginia Tech engineering Professor Marc Edwards watched as water flowed from a garden hose in Enterprise, Louisiana. As he moved a jar to catch a sample, the color changed from clear to brown.

"When mine comes out, it comes out black," Enterprise resident John Tiser said as he watched Edwards work.

Tiser, Enterprise's newly appointed water board president, was giving Edwards a tour around this rural community in central Louisiana, where residents have struggled with water problems. He says his wife drives 20 miles each direction to do laundry in a town with clear water.

Concerned about the potential health effects for his family, including his two daughters, he ran for a seat on the local water board.

What drives him, Tiser said, is "being sure that they're not consuming anything that 20 years from now is going to wind up hurting them."

Years of water system neglect means that the 250-or-so residents there are left with pipes that leak more than 70% of their water into the ground, Tiser said -- all because they can't afford to fix them.

"We're basically putting Band-Aids when we need to go to the ER. That's where we're at," he said.

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Reporter: Sara Ganim

Executive Producer: Margaret Dawson

Produced and Edited by Matthew Gannon

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