Residents in Keystone in McDowell County had been on a boil water advisory since 2010 while the neighboring town of Northfork has shared that challenge since 2013.
But soon, phase two of a water project in southern West Virginia will change all of that. After 11 years without consistent access to tap water, most Northfork residents are connected to a new water system.
Phase one of the Elkhorn Water Project began in 2015 and has connected 494 homes or businesses to a new system. This phase included a new water plant and a new 400,000 gallon water storage tank on Elkhorn Mountain. The large storage capacity of the tank allowed McDowell Public Service District to install a line that connected the communities of Anawalt, Jenkinjones, Pageton and Skygusty.
New lines and meters still need to be installed in those additional communities. The project also installed new lines, meters and fire hydrants for Maybeury, Elkhorn, and Switchback. This includes about 270 additional customers.
Phase two will connect about 450 residents including those in Keystone and Northfork, to the new system. The McDowell County Public Service District said in an email that contractors are currently connecting water service to resident’s homes.
While the boil water advisory is still in effect as of Tuesday, McDowell PSD says it can be lifted whenall the homes are connected and the old system is taken offline.
Rates increased by 4% for phase one after a USDA loan and grant program. There will be no rate increase with phase two after receiving federal grants from Economic Development Administration (EDA), USDA Rural Development and local funding $50,000 each from McDowell County Commission and McDowell County Economic Development Authority (EDA).
McDowell PSD has submitted funding applications for phase three.
Residents in West Virginia’s second-largest city are being told to boil their water as a precaution after a large water main break along one of Huntington’s main roads.
West Virginia American Water issued the advisory Tuesday afternoon a few blocks from the Marshall University campus. Motorists were asked to avoid the area along 3rd Avenue, which was covered in a few feet of water.
The company says on its website that water service was restored to most customers but repairs would not be finished until Wednesday morning. Utility customers were told to boil water before using it for drinking, bathing or food preparation. The university is included in the advisory.
Water samples taken from the Greenbrier River did not show dangerous levels of diesel, the Charleston Gazette is reporting.
This means the water intakes will be turned back on to refill the tanks and restore water pressure.
Earlier today, Al Whitaker said that after the intakes are turned on, residents will be boil water advisory for at least three days.
The pending weather is moving water distribution sites in Greenbrier County indoors. About 12,000 residents in the Lewisburg area don’t have access to water in their homes. Residents in need of water should bring their own containers to fill up at the following sites:
Monday Until 7 p.m.
Fairlea, W.Va. – West Virginia State Fairgrounds
Ronceverte, W.Va. – Island Park
Tuesday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Ronceverte, W.Va. – Island Park
National Guard Armory close to Lewisburg Airport on Industrial Drive
Weather Moves Distribution Center
Al Whitaker, Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management for Greenbrier County, says the weather is pushing distribution indoors.
The two tanks at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds are being moved to the National Guard Armory, which sits close to the Lewisburg Airport on Industrial Drive.
Greenbrier residents without drinking water should bring their own containers to the Armory beginning Tuesday at 7 a.m. Water will be distributed from 7 in the morning until 7 at night throughout the crisis.
Folks can also find water at Island Park in Ronceverte from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., again bring your own containers.
Whitaker says he’s received donations from organizations in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia as well as the Red Cross.
The Lewisburg Water Department intakes was shut down after a truck spilled diesel into Anthony Creek, a tributary to the Greenbrier River. The intakes were shut down while officials wait on water quality tests from a laboratory. If the tests are clean, the intakes will reopen. After pumping begins, it’s expected to take 24 hours for the water to reach homes.
Whitaker says residents can expect a boil water advisory of 3 days when service is restored.
After months without access to safe water, representatives with the Department of Health and Human Resources say the boil water advisory has been lifted in a Wyoming County community.
Folks in Alpoca/Bud including Herndon Consolidated School have been on a boil water advisory since September 2013 with water running a dark brown at times. The boil water advisory was issued because of the color and because the system did not have a certified water operator.
Residents had been purchasing drinking water and finding alternative locations for washing clothes. The community found some relief in the past few months with donations from groups and individuals from across the country.
Now relief comes to their homes as the advisory was lifted earlier this week after an operator was designated, and after the water cleared and passed a bacteria test.
“We are relieved that the boil water advisory is over," Herndon Consolidated School Principal Virginia Lusk said. "It’s been a lot of additional work on the staff."
"It’s going to be a relief to be back to normal and not have to carry water and be able to use the fountain and we’re just happy that it’s going to be over now.”
In an email, Allison Adler with DHHR said that the Logan County PSD replaced and repaired components in the filter, for a second time.
Logan County PSD does all of the operation and maintenance for the Eastern Wyoming PSD.
A business deal with owners of Alpoca Water Works and the Eastern Wyoming County PSD contributed to the 7-month-long boil advisory. The state public service commission approved the acquisition sale of Alpoca Water to the PSD late last month.
The deal was a complicated one. It took cooperation with current land owners which just so happened to be a NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, as well as Alpoca Water owners, a nearby willing public water utility, and the state PSC. All parties had to be coordinated in order to work out the details so residents can have clean water.
The PSC first approved the deal in 2009.
Updated Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 4:09 p.m.:
West Virginia State Senator Mike Green issued the following statement after Department of Health and Human Resources representatives lifted the boil water advisory in the Bud/Alpoca area of Wyoming County.
“After more than six months, residents in the Bud/Alpoca area now have the clean water they deserve. In this day and age, all people in West Virginia should have access to clean drinkable water. I commend the West Virginia Public Service Commission for marshaling the effort it took to work out the details between land owners, public service districts, and utilities to bring this crisis to an end. I also want to thank General Jim Hoyer and the West Virginia National Guard for its quick response in regards to my request for assistance during this unfortunate time.” “I know the Charleston water crisis made national headlines, but the scope and duration of this event affected the residents of Wyoming County as much or more than the Elk River situation.”
Northfork has been on a boil water advisory since July 2013, even longer than the folks in neighboring Wyoming County in Bud/Alpoca. It’s the seventh boil water advisory since 2009. Some residents in higher elevations have gone more than five weeks without water in their homes. But like in Alpoca, once again, part of the problem is an outdated water treatment system.
The latest boil water advisory for about 180 customers on the town’s water system was issued after the filter basically stopped working.
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The water system is located inside a cinder-block building in Northfork along the Elkhorn Creek River.
Credit Jessica Lilly
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To cope, worker Larry Porterfield (far right) says they flush the system about every other day which causes pressure to drop.
“That’s what they recommend but now we have to do it every other day because the filtration material has got to its limit where it’s not working any more,” Porterfield said. “So we need to replace that and that will filter the water better.”
The rust runs deep inside the two story cinder block building. Upstairs is access to two water filters.
Credit Jessica Lilly
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The gauge read a high reading on this day.
The workers say that the water comes from a deep well under the building. The water is fed to a tank on a hill and then flows back to the pump-house to be filtered, put in a clear well and finally pumped to customers.
Downstairs Porterfield shows me the pressure reading. On this day, it was high.
“Everybody should be having good pressure,” Porterfield said, “but like when the pressure goes down to 60 sometimes 40 and folks on the higher elevations don’t have any water.”
Flushing combined with a bitter cold winter, several private busted pipes, and almost constantly running water to keep pipes from freezing creates very low pressure at times.
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The access port for the filter discharge to the finished water clear well.
Northfork worker Joe Gadberry says finding and fixing underground leaks is another challenge.
"We basically create miracles with what we got," Gadberry said. "What we got is we maintain to make we got water. It would be nice to have a backhoe but most of the times we dig it by hand."
To top it off, the main meter that measures the amount of water leaving the pumphouse, is broken.
Inside the building to the right of the metal stairs, a large pipe runs parallel to the ground. The pipe eventually curves through the floor. At the bend, sits a meter covered in what appears to be a mixture of moisture, rust and corrosion. I ask Porterfield about it.
At city hall, I find city Councilman Curtis Spencer, who also serves as chairman of the water board.
“It’s an old system,” Spencer said. “We’re just trying to make it last until the PSD come down but there’s not definite date when they going to be here.”
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The main water meter is broken.
Northfork will eventually be a part of the Elkhorn Water Project. The project is broken down into four phases with plans to pick up old coal camp towns along route 52 starting just past the Mercer/McDowell line where a new water plant will be located. The initial waterline will be installed from there through Maybeury, and eventually ending up in Northfork Hollow.
Bids for Phase one go out this month and construction is expected to be complete after one year. Phase two, which is still at least two years away, is expected to bring a dependable clean water supply to Northfork. The McDowell County Public Service District has been working to coordinate the project as quickly as possible. Executive Director Mavis Brewster says it just takes time.
“A lot of times with the residents they don’t understand the process,” she said. “They just have a need for the water and they don’t understand all the hoops that you have to jump through.”
“But it’s so rewarding once you see those residents actually having good safe quality water that they’ve never had before.”
Brewster says the biggest challenge is securing funding. She hopes Small Cities Block grants will pay for phase two.
The water board was created late December 2013 to make improvements to the system and collect on delinquent accounts. Board president Curtis Spencer says about 40 percent of the customers have stopped paying their bills.
“Some of them can’t,” he said. “The town has been real lenient with them. We’re getting to the place where we just going to have to get tough on them.”
Phase two is dependent upon an election in neighboring Keystone. The town has to tie into the PSD in order to move the project along.
But for several towns in rural West Virginia, going without clean water is a way of life.
We’ve followed the story about the folks in Bud/Alpoca, an area of Wyoming County that remains on a boil water advisory that’s been in effect since September. There the water runs different shades of brown that stains clothes.
Across the border in McDowell County you’ll find several more communities coping with limited access to clean water.
Northfork has been on a boil water advisory since July 2013 yet, the situation hasn’t merited much attention or a state of emergency.
Including the active advisory, the town of about 180 customers has been on seven boil water advisories since 2009, some lasting for months. It’s been an ongoing issue for years.
“I know this is not how it’s supposed to be,” Northfork resident Micole Bright said. “This is like a third world country or something.”
Bright welcomes me into her home and explains that the white plastic buckets stacked at the door are for holding water. The family has to be prepared for the next time they go without water.
Another stack of plastic containers are piled in the hallway just outside the bathroom. This stack is to flush the toilets.
You see- here the biggest challenge is having water at all.
“The water goes off pretty often and it stays off for about last time was 27 days,” Bright said. “It’s real hard with the kids going to school and cleaning and washing clothes and cooking and doing dishes it’s just real hard.”
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Micole Bright lives in a Northfork home at the end of the service lines. She loses water service when while other residents don’t. Still the dated water system creates outages for the entire town.
Bright says this time she lost water on January 13 and it remained off for more than five weeks. Bright says she tries not to bother the folks at city hall too much. Bright only calls after the water service has been out for three or four days. Some residents don’t call at all.
The water system operated by the town of Northfork, is outdated, and the filter needs to be replaced. So employees have to flush the system about every other day, causing the pressure to drop especially for customers like Bright who live at higher elevations.
“It just seems like sometimes when you live in a place like this you’re not heard as well as you would be if you were somewhere else in a different town or something like that,” Bright said. “Here it’s like, OK you’re in Northfork, so what? You’re in McDowell County what do you expect.That kind of attitude.”
Water for Northfork will eventually come from the McDowell County Public Service District but that’s not expected to happen for years. The PSD is phasing in an expansion of service and Northfork is part of the second phase. Bids for phase one go out this month.
In the meantime, Northfork residents remain without access to clean water and on a boil water advisory.
