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Lee County Community in Decades-Long Water Crisis

Topher Forhecz

UPDATE: For clarification, Tim Byrne was working for Crystal Clear Water Purification, Inc. when he first went to Charleston Park last year.  Now with his own company, Aqua Consultants, Byrne says he remains concerned about the community. 

A Lee County community is reportedly living off of contaminated well water.

WGCU told you about the problem in Charleston Park more than three years ago, but now, the News-Press has released a series titled, “Something in the Water,” which delves into the ongoing water issues in the small community, where the nearest grocery store is nine miles away and where the average income is shy of $16,000.

News-Press' Janine Zeitlin has followed this story from the start and is the byline on each piece in the multi-platform series. She joins Gulf Coast Live to talk about her investigation.

She is joined by Tim Byrne of Aqua Consultants — the good Samaritan with more than 30 years of industry experience, who has been testing and treating Charleston Park residents’ water for free. 

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.