Up to $11,000 @ 1% Toward Your Well!

Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project, Inc.’s Loan Fund is now able to provide funding for individual household wells due to funding from USDA-Rural Development. Applications are available on the company website at www.SoutheastRCAP.org. We are dedicated to improving the quality of life for low to moderate income persons rural area in the southeast Region (DE,MD,VA,NC,SC,GA, and FL). Qualification: An eligible individual means an Individual who is a member of a household in which all members have a combined income ( for the most recent 12 month period for which the information is available) that is not more than 100% of the median Non-metropolitan household income for the state or territory in which the individual lives.

In most of our service areas, that means around $61,200 per year!

Other restrictions:

Loan recipient must either own or occupy the home or be occupying the home as the purchaser under a legally enforced land purchase contract which is not under default by the seller or the purchaser. The home must be located in a rural area. The water well system may not be used to substitute water service available from collective water systems. The water well system may not be associated with the construction of a new dwelling. Loan recipient must not be suspended or debarred from participation in Federal programs.

Southeast RCAP, Inc. is a private non-profit company and their Well Loan Program is "an effort to help so many of the people who are without water obtain such a necessity."

Please contact Daniel Lawson at 540.345.1184 ext. 135, or Sharon Thomas, Loan Fund Coordinator, ext. 122 for more information.

Giving Away Our Water

Imagine the civil government issuing you an order to pump water out of your well, on your property, to your neighbors' homes.

Imagine that same government agency telling you that you had no right to the water in that well, and that you needed to find another source of water for your home, and compliance to their orders would be at the point of a gun if you could not "work it out."

What would you do? How would you react?

The State of Georgia, where I reside, is in that very situation, and our leaders are not reacting the way you might in the above "imaginary" example.

Yesterday, the Governor of Georgia, Sonny Purdue, met with the Governors of Florida and Alabama, our State's neighbors in Montgomery, AL to discuss how we might comply.

Please don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting that we should ignore the needs of Florida and Alabama. Going back to our "imaginary" scenario, and removing the outside influence of the civil government; who among us would be so uncaring as to not give that needy neighbor a gallon or bucket or whatever we could spare? Who would not help their neighbor build their own water system?

Yet meetings like this, under the misplaced thumb of an out-of-control government not only undermine any good and positive relations we might have been able to build with our neighbors, it also puts them in a tough spot: they asked the feds to rule here, so when the feds come after their States' natural resources, they'll have a much harder time saying no.

Unintended Consequences.

Now, this may be a bit of a strong position for your taste, but States' Rights advocate and 2010 Georgia Gubernatorial candidate Ray McBerry's position on water is certainly closer to my sentiments than that of the current administration. Have a listen.

The notion that neither the federal government nor the state own or have rights to natural resources seems primary to our nation's founding.

Maybe we'll get some leadership in Georgia who agrees with that position, for a change.