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Caroline County, doing it right Date published: 4/15/2009
HAD IT FOLLOWED a trajectory But that isn't the Caroline County of today, thanks to the many good citizens who diverted it from misery to progress, and onto a path to contend for a 2009 All-America City Award. The awards, given by the Denver-based National Civic League, honor jurisdictions that have improved people's lives through the joint efforts of government, private citizens, and nonprofit groups. Caroline is a previous finalist for the accolade, inaugurated by President Teddy Roosevelt and other reformers in the 1890s, and this June hopes to claim the top prize during a three-day competition in Tampa, Fla. The county, which has often struggled as its wealthier neighbors boomed, but never surrendered its pride or community spirit, is the only jurisdiction in Virginia to vie for the NCL prize. Caroline has submitted three projects for the league's consideration. Each is a salutary achievement. The Dawn Rehabilitation Project. Dawn is a mostly African-American hamlet of about 400 homes long plagued by failing sewer systems and unhealthy water--some samples contained animal and human feces--obtained from shallow wells or even hand-dug pits. The county government, church leaders, and others went to work, gaining these habitually neglected citizens' confidence and securing state and federal grants. Besides making sewer and water improvements through innovative, decentralized technology, the program rehabbed crumbling homes and, in the words of the county's report, gave "[t]he elderly, many in their 70s and 80s, a new lease on life." Lifted from a rural sump, Dawn citizens are landscaping and putting out gardens in a new day of hope and pride.
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