Florene Reed always makes sure there’s enough bottled water for her teenaged grandson, even if that means she herself has to drink tap water that causes a burning sensation in her stomach.
Reed, 63, grew up drinking the crystalline water from wells and local springs throughout the Appalachian Mountains in Martin County, Kentucky. But she switched to bottled water while raising her own family amid safety fears linked to coal mining and mismanagement at the local public utility.
She’s not alone: 96 per cent of residents rely primarily on bottled water for drinking, and only 56 per cent use tap water for cooking, according to a study carried out by the University of Kentucky. The tap water smells strongly of chlorine, and residents frequently report problems with bad taste, discoloration, sediment and irritated or burning skin after bathing.
“In Martin County, nobody drinks the tap water unless they have to, you can’t trust it, and you can’t trust the water department,” said Reed, a former teacher’s assistant who lives off $780 a month in benefits. Reed pays two water bills: $60 to $70 a month to the utility, and $30 or so to the store for bottled water.
Deep mistrust
This deep mistrust, residents and advocates say, is a legacy of how the water infrastructure has been neglected and mismanaged for years. Martin County in south-eastern rural Kentucky is one of the poorest in America, with almost 40 per cent of its estimated 12,000, mostly white, residents living in poverty, and high rates of opioid addiction. It was once the heart of the booming US coal industry, but all that’s left now are a handful of mines, property empires belonging to former coal barons and the freight train that now mostly transports consumer goods.
The county’s water problems first came into sharp focus in October 2000, when a local coal company spilled 306 million US gallons (1.16 billion litres) of coal slurry containing high concentrations of arsenic and mercury into nearby waterways. Following the disaster, regulators recommended root and branch reforms to fix the broken infrastructure and management system.
Yet, over the next two decades, the utility failed to invest in water infrastructure while doubling its service network — largely to households whose private wells were contaminated by coal mining. The result is a network of hotchpotch pipes and pumps causing frequent line breaks and outages, forcing schools to be closed and residents to boil water for safety.
Water warriors
In 2016, a grassroots group called Martin County Water Warriors was created, and community members began sharing photos and stories about leaks, contamination and outages. A second group, Martin County Concerned Citizens, persuaded the state regulator (the Kentucky Public Service Commission, or PSC) to give ordinary citizens a role in holding the water department accountable. As a result, the entire water board resigned in protest at the end of 2017, leaving the utility saddled with a $1.1 million debt.
In early 2018, the new board inherited a system on the brink of collapse: the utility was losing $100,000 a month and sought to increase rates by 49.5 per cent. The following day, half the county lost its water supply, leaving some residents without water for three weeks. In the end, the PSC approved a 42 per cent price increase, leaving one of Kentucky’s poorest counties with the fifth most expensive water rates in the state.
“The water district has always been part of the corrupt old boys’ system, where certain people and businesses got away with [not] paying their fair share, while the majority were left paying for water they can’t even drink,” said Nina McCoy, a retired biology teacher and now a water advocate with Concerned Citizens. “People are still worried about the safety of the water, and that’s legitimate, but the biggest problem is affordability.” Nationwide, millions of ordinary Americans are facing rising and unaffordable bills for running water, and risk being disconnected or losing their homes if they cannot pay. And bills are likely to become even less affordable.
A constant battle
On 1 January 2020, Alliance Water Resources, a private company that also runs rural utilities in Tennessee, Missouri and Iowa, took over the daily operation of Martin County’s water department in a contract worth $160,000 a month. Almost everything needs overhauling after decades of neglect. Federal funding for water systems has declined by 77 per cent since 1977. “It’s a constant battle, like putting out fires, but now we are fixing things and have a systematic plan [for] maintenance,” said Craig Miller, Alliance Water’s division manager.
Repairs and reconnections are happening faster, but the dilapidated system continues to hemorrhage water and cash. In June, 71 per cent of treated water was leaked before it reached a tap, and the utility lost almost $50,000, according to figures that Alliance presented at July’s public board meeting. A new billing system already resulted in substantially higher charges for some residents, including bills higher than $300 in July. A universal price hike is almost certain to occur in 2021.
“Water is a human right, but clean water is not, it costs money, someone has to pay for it,” said Miller. “The fact is: revenues are not covering costs.” Miller also claims that water theft is “rampant”. As a result, anyone caught siphoning water for a second time now faces disconnection and a lifetime ban — a deterrent condemned by advocates. “Disconnecting people is an effective deterrent, absolutely,” said Miller.
Contaminants
“We’re very concerned about a rate hike before improvements in quality and leaks are seen, and when affordability is already a major issue,” said Mary Cromer, attorney at the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center. According to a study, private water companies charge on average 59 per cent more than public utilities.
Grassroots activism has forced greater transparency and accountability from the utility, but most people still do not trust the water. To address this, the University of Kentucky Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences designed a citizen-science study in which trained community members obtained tap water samples from 97 households throughout 2019.
The results were alarming: almost half the samples had at least one contaminant that violated at least one Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard. The main health concern was unsafe levels of disinfection byproducts (DBP) that are associated with certain cancers and birth defects. DBPs are formed by the reaction between chlorine added during the treatment process — necessary to kill harmful bacteria — and organic material found in raw water and inadequately flushed pipes. But the EPA has reported zero DBP violations in Martin County since 2018. That was when the EPA halved its collection sites to just two.
Frustrating
Steps can be taken to reduce DBPs, yet even before the results were published, Craig Miller, of Alliance Water, and Jimmy Kerr, president of the water board, had dismissed the findings, claiming an insider had blown the whistle on sample collection irregularities. “Water quality hasn’t been an issue for two years but there’s inaccurate data and people out there who have an agenda. This is about perception and education,” said Miller. Not so, said lead researcher Jason Unrine: “We followed all EPA protocols and the samples were analysed in state accredited labs.”
Kerr, who claims his children drink the tap water, said the study distracted from the progress made. “It’s frustrating that the advocates are trying to pull us back in the wrong direction. It’s a completely different district now, the data is old. But a few people think they are the next Erin Brockovich. The easiest thing is fixing pipes, the hardest will be getting people’s trust back.”
BarbiAnn Maynard is an outspoken activist with Water Warriors who drinks and cooks with spring water. “The board call me a ‘lovable pain in the ass’,” she said. “But that’s fine, we’re forcing them to do their jobs. Just because Martin County is poor, isolated and rural doesn’t mean we’re not important. We deserve affordable clean water, too.”