Jeff Matthews

jmatthews@thetowntalk.com, (318) 487-6380

Red Hill Spring may not mean anything to most people in Central Louisiana, but for people from tiny communities such as Lincecum, Selma and Mudville, it felt like a part of home.

There's no sign directing people to the spring, or marker commemorating its place in that corner of Grant Parish.

Tucked into a small patch of woods not far from U.S. Highway 165 between the small towns of Pollock and Georgetown, you would only know it was there if you knew to look for it. Local residents know how to find it though. That's because before the area had running water, Red Hill Spring was the source of drinking water for generations of area residents.

And, as it turns out, many of those residents would still prefer to drink from the spring rather than the water from the local water company.

When John Parker bought 64 acres of land in Grant Parish with the intention of raising cattle — a purchase that included the spring — he had no idea of the spring's history. Or how attached many of the area residents were to it.

Parker soon found out when, concerned about liability, he closed off access to the spring.

"I didn't know what I was getting myself into," Parker said. "I just kind of fell into this whole thing."

Even after the area got its own water system in the early 1980s, many locals continued to visit the spring because, as Jim Bradford said, "water from the tap is just not as good."

"Like everybody else, I grew up taking water out of the spring," said the 76-year-old Bradford, who lives about three miles from the spring. "For a long time, when we didn't have running water, that's what you did, you went to springs."

"For folks like my family, this spring has been the source of good, natural water for hundreds of years," said Brandon Lincecum. "I've been drinking this spring water since I was a baby. Same with my daddy. Same with my granddaddy when he was alive."

The problem — Parker worried that the water is not safe to drink.

Although locals swear by the spring — "It's just as good or better than any water you can buy at the store," Lincecum said — health officials have warned for some time that drinking from it carries risks.

As far back as 1983, The Town Talk reported the parish sanitarian declared the spring contaminated.

When Parker bought the property, he had water from the spring tested by the Louisiana Department of Health. The test showed the presence of total coliform bacteria in the spring's well. Mostly harmless to humans, total coliforms are seen as an indicator that a water system is vulnerable to other, dangerous contaminants, such as E. coli.

Water from the well tested negative for E. coli, but Parker worried that there would be no way to tell if dangerous contaminants would enter the water in the future because, unlike public water systems, private wells are not tested for safety.

He decided to block access to the spring by placing a gate at the road leading to it. After the gate was knocked down, he dismantled the pvc pipe system that carried water from the well to a collection point at the end of the road.

"It's not safe to drink out of," he said. "Back in the day, that's all people had. But that's not the case now."

Public or private?

Parker's decision to close the spring caused some hard feelings, and questions about whether he had the right to do it.

The dirt road that leads to the spring is part of the property, which had long been owned by out-of-state timber companies, that Parker and his wife purchased in February. But the parish had maintained the road for years, which, under Louisiana law, could make it public property.

After the gate was knocked down, Grant Parish Police Juror Don Arnold posted pictures on Facebook of the cleared road and a bulldozer.

"Please be advised that it is unlawful to block a public road," he posted. "And a cool drink from the springs was enjoyed after the work was completed."

Parker is eager to move on from the dispute over the road, calling it "a big misunderstanding."

On May 11, the Police Jury voted 4-3 to abandon any claim to the road.

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'It's gone, and we miss it'

Lincecum says he does not blame Parker for closing access to the spring to avoid the potential for a future lawsuit.

But he can't help but lament its loss.

His grandparents were the unofficial caretakers of the spring. When the well needed to be refurbished around 1980, they took up donations from local families to get it done.

Lincecum grew up regaled by stories about the spring told by his grandfather, Leon, such as Leon's mother washing clothes for soldiers in the spring during the Louisiana Maneuvers. When the spring was closed, Lincecum said, "it was like taking a piece of him away."

"It's going to be really tough for me to drink any other water," he said. "This specific water, there's nothing else like it. But that's life, and we'll have to deal with it."

"It's something everybody takes for granted is always going to be there," Bradford said. "Now it's gone, and we miss it."

Parker understands their feelings, but believes the safety issues outweigh everything else.

Although he plans to clear cut what's left of the woods on most of the property, he intends to leave the area around the spring alone. He's open to having some sort of park on the site, with a nod to its history (local legend is that several famous outlaws with bases in Louisiana, including the James-Younger Gang and Bonnie and Clyde, stopped at the spring for water).

But he plans to keep the spring closed to drinking.

"It should be in the public interest that people aren't drinking that water," Parker said.