Drinking Water Safety Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

State Lawmakers, Advocates Set To Act On ‘Forever Chemicals’

With toxic “forever chemicals” being detected in waterways statewide, the pollutants have caught the attention of both the public eye and state legislators.

PFAS are a group of around 10,000 manmade chemicals that have been used to manufacture both industrial and consumer products for around 80 years. More commonly known as “forever chemicals,” they’re known to cause health problems like liver damage, higher cholesterol, cancer and a weakened immune system, among others.

Most famously, PFAS chemicals have been used to create industrial-grade firefighting foam and have been used by companies like Chemours and Dupont to create Teflon. But they’re also found in products like food packaging and water-resistant jackets.

“These products end up in landfills, many of them can have leachate that gets into the groundwater and percolates through the soil,” Jenna Dodson, staff scientist at the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, said.

Dodson was among the panelists at a public conference addressing PFAS earlier this month in Shepherdstown, located in the Eastern Panhandle.

Levels of PFAS chemicals above the federal EPA’s health advisories have been found in 130 raw water supplies statewide, with the state’s Departments of Environmental Protection and Health and Human Resources currently testing the state’s treated water systems as well.

In 2019, the CDC reported that state residents living near the Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base in Martinsburg had blood concentrations of PFAS higher than the national average. Bases like that use the PFAS firefighting foam, and it is believed the chemicals contaminated much of the local waterways. Martinsburg’s Big Springs water filtration plant was temporarily shut down in 2016 after high levels of the chemicals were found.

“They’re in our waterways, it’s in our soil, it’s in our air because it also travels via air deposition,” Dodson said. “And so that’s why they’re so ubiquitous and again, localized contamination can occur.”

In the region alone, there are 36 raw water supplies that have been identified as having unsafe amounts of the chemicals. That area, along with the Ohio River Valley, is considered a “PFAS hot zone” in West Virginia, though they’ve been found in water supplies statewide.

A map depicting the locations of raw water systems statewide where PFAS were detected at higher levels than current federal health advisories. (West Virginia Rivers Coalition)

Dodson was joined by Brent Walls of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network. He’s studying PFAS’ effects on the Potomac River’s aquatic ecosystem by surveying small-range fish species in the area. He discovered some fish in the nearby Antietam Creek in Maryland had elevated amounts of the chemicals in their tissue.

“That was extremely alarming because smallmouth bass is a popular recreational fish species, not only for catch and release, but also for families and communities to take home to eat,” Walls said.

Health advisory guidelines released by the EPA in 2022 say anything above 0.004 parts per trillion for PFOA or 0.02 parts per trillion for PFOS are considered unsafe. PFOA and PFOS are two common PFAS subgroups.

“That would be one drop of PFOS in 20 Olympic sized pools,” Walls said. “That’s the kind of visualization of how small the amount of this pollutant has an impact.”

Walls is worried state and local agencies wouldn’t be able to properly measure and treat PFAS because of how little amounts are needed to infiltrate waterways to contaminate them.

“Those tests are expensive,” Walls said. “And even if the facilities are able to find the lab to provide the analysis for their influent or effluent (river systems), or even for the drinking water that goes out to the public, then they have to find the resources to address the situation, to implement some level of protection, some kind of a water treatment to remove the PFAS down to those levels. And that’s going to cost some money.”

That’s a concern echoed by John Bresland, one of the local citizens in attendance at the Shepherdstown conference Walls and Dodson spoke at. He’s also a member of the town’s water board.

EPA Senior Advisor Rod Snyder speaks at a community panel at Shepherd University’s Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional Education and History as fellow panelists Jenna Dodson and Brent Walls look on. (Shepherd Snyder/WV Public Broadcasting)

“I know that the current wastewater plant that we have will not be able to remove PFAS,” Bresland said. “So we need to get some guidance from the EPA if, and when, the time comes.”

The EPA is set to propose a national drinking water standard regulating PFOA and PFOS by the end of this year. That could come as early as this Spring, according to EPA senior advisor Rod Snyder, who also spoke at the conference.

Other locals in attendance, like David Lillard, were concerned about both his health as well as the health of the local environment.

“We’re a headwater state,” Lillard said. “So water that flows from our mountains is not only our drinking water, it is a drinking water for people in the Ohio Valley. And in the Potomac River Basin. It’s 5 million people just in the Washington, DC area.”

In the state legislature, bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate that would require the state Department of Environmental Protection to create an action plan to address PFAS chemicals, have state manufacturing facilities monitor and self-report PFAS discharge and would enforce a limit on said discharges statewide.

Senate Bill 485 passed through the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resource Committee and is currently in the Finance Committee. The House of Delegates’ equivalent bill, HB 3189, passed the House as of Friday. It’s now on its way to the Senate.

Free Water Operator Training Books Accessible In Bluefield

A library in Mercer County is one of six across the country selected to house training materials for water operators.

For a few months now, textbooks that help candidates prepare for the water operator exam have been available at the Craft Memorial Library in Bluefield. These materials, which usually cost between $90-$200 per book, were donated by the Southwest Environmental Finance Center (EFC) and Environmental Finance Center Network.

The pilot program is part of a larger project called “Building Technical, Managerial, and Financial (TMF) Capacity for Small Water Systems” that helps build and support the water workforce in the country.

The Southwest EFC access to training materials is critical for sustainable operations maintenance of small rural water systems.

West Virginia and the rest of the country are approaching what experts believe will be an “operator shortage” as workers retire.

Craft Memorial Library representatives – less than 5 people have checked out or used the materials.

Destitute Small Towns At Heightened Risk Of Dangerous Tap Water

An analysis of Environmental Protection Agency records shows many small communities in particular are left unprotected by destitute and unmaintained water providers. The Associated Press found that on average over the past three years, these racked up roughly twice as many health violations as big city providers. Certain small water utilities persistently struggle to provide safe water. Fines can push these precarious utilities even deeper into trouble. In many places, people struggle to find water or else drink water that isn't clean. We visit Keystone, W.Va., Terre du Lac, Mo. and Ferriday, La.

Donna Dickerson’s heart would sink every time she’d wake up, turn on the faucet in her mobile home and hear the pipes gurgling.

Sometimes it would happen on a day when her mother, who is 86 and has dementia, had a doctor’s appointment and needed to bathe. Sometimes it would be on Thanksgiving or Christmas when family had come to stay.

“It was sickening, literally a headache and it disrupted everything,” she said. “Out of nowhere, the water would be gone, and we’d have no idea when it’d be back.”

It is hard enough to care for someone with dementia. Caring for someone with dementia with no safe water takes the stress to another level.

While failures of big city water systems attract the attention, it’s small communities like Keystone, West Virginia that more often are left unprotected by destitute and unmaintained water providers. Small water providers rack up roughly twice as many health violations as big cities on average, an analysis of thousands of records over the last three years by The Associated Press shows. In that time, small water providers violated the Safe Drinking Water Act’s health standards nearly 9,000 times. They were also frequently the very worst performers. Federal law allows authorities to force changes on water utilities, but they rarely do, even for the worst offenders.

“We’re talking about things that we’ve known in drinking water for a century, that we have an expectation in this country that everybody should be afforded,” said Chad Seidel, president of a water consulting company.

The worst water providers can have such severe problems that residents are told they can’t drink the water. For ten solid years Dickerson and 175 neighbors in the tiny, majority Black community of Keystone had to boil all their water. That length of time is nearly unheard of — such warnings usually last only for days. The requirement added gas and electricity costs on top of the water bill. In addition, residents would lose water outright for days or even weeks at a time with no warning.

A coal company had built the original system, but since left, leaving no one in charge.

When Dickerson’s water went out, she would drive the dying county’s winding mountain roads to the food bank, or buy water at Dollar General – one of the area’s only stores. She’d haul containers back home and heat up pots on the stove to fill the tub, so her mother could bathe. She stored water in containers in her mobile home’s two bathrooms to flush toilets. Dishes and laundry would pile up.

There was the cost of gas, the cost of 5 gallon water jugs, the cost of washing clothes at the laundromat. There was also an emotional cost.

“It drains you,” she said. “You have to learn how to survive.”

When President Gerald Ford signed the landmark Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, he said “nothing is more essential to the life of every single American,” than clean water to drink, also mentioning clean air and pure food. The law protected Americans against 22 contaminants, including arsenic. Nearly half a century later, evolving science has broadened the coverage to more than 90 substances, and strengthened standards along the way.

The miracle is that most water systems keep up – 94% comply with health standards.

But Dickerson lives in one of the places that didn’t, the AP found, that struggles and fails repeatedly.

After years of problems, Keystone finally got hooked up to a new water system last December, McDowell Public Service District, which focuses on upgrading systems in coal communities. The deteriorating water mains were replaced, and a non-proft called DigDeep helped pay to connect homes to the new infrastructure.

When a water utility doesn’t treat water properly or has high levels of a contaminant, states are supposed to enforce the law. They usually give communities time to fix problems, and often they do. But if there is intransigence or delay, the state can escalate and impose fines. In many towns, that doesn’t go well.

“Giving them a penalty is not going to get you anywhere. It’s just going to make the situation worse in most cases,” said Heather Himmelberger, director of the Southwest Environmental Finance Center at the University of New Mexico. The towns can’t afford the work.

Some 3% of all systems the AP analyzed landed on the EPA’s enforcement priority list last year. Even worse are the 450 utilities that stayed on the list for at least five of the last 10 years. Four million Americans rely on these systems.

Regulators rarely step in to force change.

“Mostly what regulators have is moral appeal and they’ll wag their finger,” said Manny Teodoro, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who focuses on public policy and water.

The EPA says the vast majority of systems do provide safe water and for those that struggle, the agency has increased technical assistance, inspections and enforcement. Those efforts have decreased the number of systems consistently committing health violations, according to Carol King, an attorney in the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

Teodoro said originally water systems sprouted up when communities did, giving rise to a fragmented drinking water sector dominated by small providers. School districts in America formed the same way, but went through a period of consolidation. That’s happened far less with community water systems.

The top concern of the sector is funding for infrastructure, according to a survey.

Josiah Cox has a special view of which towns end up in the worst trouble. He spent years working on water issues and noticed many small utility owners failed to save money for maintenance or struggled when experienced staff members left.

So he started a business, Central States Water Resources, buying up problem utilities, doing upgrades and billing customers for the costs over time.

Terre Du Lac, Missouri was one. It’s a private, 5,200-acre community of roughly 1,200 homes nestled around 16 lakes. It advertises a relaxed atmosphere an hour south of St. Louis where people come to golf or water ski.

But rust coated the water tower. The community drinking water well was pulling up naturally-occurring radioactive material that can cause cancer.

He has seen a lot: bird feces in drinking water and one place that treated its water with chlorine tablets meant for swimming pools.

“You start what we call the death spiral of these utilities” where they don’t have the resources to pay for what regulators are demanding, Cox said.

Michael Tilley, who was slammed by regulators for how he operated the Terre Du Lac system before Cox took over, spent most of his life in the community and knows many residents. He said he felt a responsibility to serve them well, but repeatedly faced hurdles finding grant money.

“I think if I had any claim to fame it was just keeping the rates low and trying to operate this thing on a shoestring,” he said. “I look back a lot of times and that was my problem.”

Recruitment of professionals to run small water system is also a major issue. The largely white, male workforce is aging, according to surveys.

Earlier in his career, Tim Wilson, a water project manager, spent time running the treatment plant in Wahpeton, Iowa, a community of just over 400 that expands when vacationers rush in during the summertime.

Small, rural communities have a “ridiculously hard” time recruiting certified operators, he said. Then once they trained, they can be lured away by better pay and benefits elsewhere.

The job demands can also be overwhelming. In Wahpeton, Wilson was the lone employee responsible for the treatment plant. He doubled as a snow plow driver and zoning expert at local government meetings. His crowning achievement, he says, was convincing officials to hire another person to help. It took six years.

Nearly 1,000 miles south in Ferriday, Louisiana, staffing is one problem, but the water has failed people in every major way.

You know your water is in trouble when it’s being distributed by the National Guard. That’s where residents of Ferriday took their bottles and buckets for four months back in 1999.

“I haven’t drunk the water since,” said Jameel Green, 42, who has lived in town most of his life. He now makes sure his two girls, ages 16 and eight, don’t drink Ferriday water either, even if it costs $60 a month.

He held up a garden hose caked with a white film from the water.

It wasn’t always like this. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ferriday had a vibrant music scene – Jerry Lee Lewis was a local and acts like B.B. King stopped by. Some 5,200 people called Ferriday home. There are about 40% fewer people now, and Ferriday is a mainly Black community. The Delta Music Museum that celebrates the town’s place in music history is surrounded by mostly empty shops.

In 2016, the water situation was supposed to change. The U.S. Department of Agriculture helped fund a new treatment plant that went into operation.

But when the company that built the plant walked away after completion, the people operating it were left with little training on how to run it. Staff have struggled to find the right mix of chemicals, according to the Rev. James Smith Sr., who was brought in to help with the issue.

“That’s the big problem. Everybody is still doing trial and error,” Smith said.

Ferriday’s water problems represented “a system in total breakdown,” according to Sri Vedachalam, director of water equity and climate resilience at Environmental Consulting & Technology Inc, who reviewed public files.

Water disinfection in Ferriday is leaving behind levels of carcinogens that are too high. For failing to fix its problems, the state issued Ferriday a $455,265 fine in November 2021.

Smith said the water is now significantly improved. It’s tested regularly and plant operators are working on new treatment methods.

But Ferriday never responded to the fine and the Louisiana health department is threatening to ask a judge to impose a timeline for improvements and force payment.

Without a lot more money and more aggressive intervention in the worst places, experts say many Americans will continue to endure an expensive search for drinkable water, or else they’ll drink water that is potentially unsafe.

“In my view, this is a desperate problem,” Teodoro said.

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Phillis reported from Ferriday, Louisiana, and St. Louis. Fassett reported from Seattle.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

W.Va. Communities Celebrate Return Of Clean Water

Several communities in West Virginia's southern coalfields celebrated the completion of a long awaited project to bring clean water to local communities last week.

Several communities in West Virginia’s southern coalfields celebrated the completion of a long awaited project to bring clean water to local communities last week.

The Elkhorn Water Project began in 2015 and included a new 400,000 gallon water storage tank on Elkhorn Mountain. The recently completed phase two brings county water to 112 McDowell County Service District customers in Upland, Kyle and Powhatan; 163 customers in Northfork and Algoma; and 101 in Keystone, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported.

Many water systems in the area were installed in the early 1900s by coal companies and have been failing for years. Residents of Keystone, for example, were under a boil water notice for more than a decade.

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., met with local and state officials on Thursdayto celebrate the completion phase two. Capito said clean drinking water is among the basic infrastructure rights, which includes good roads and broadband access.

Water Protection Project in Jefferson County Aimed At Environment, Safety, Green Jobs

A large environmental project in Jefferson County is underway in Jefferson County, aimed at ensuring the safe future of area water supplies.

The West Virginia Rivers Coalition has planted nearly 900 trees and shrubs to protect the drinking water in the Harpers Ferry community.

The area, known as a riparian buffer, was planted along the Elk’s Run Watershed, which provides residents of the Jefferson County towns of Harpers Ferry and Bolivar with clean drinking water. It is also the only stream in the county that provides water to a municipality and drinking water to thousands of Harpers Ferry residents and tourists.

A riparian buffer is a natural strip of vegetation next to a stream or a creek that protects it from pollution. Not only does this help the environment, but it also improves the community surrounding it.

“We can’t have a thriving economy without clean water. Our businesses need it — we can’t have a thriving recreational economy,” said Tanner Haid, Eastern Panhandle field coordinator of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “This means everything to the people that live and work in this community.”

The organization, dedicated to protecting rivers and streams statewide, teamed up with local business owners and the Harpers Ferry Water Commission for this project as a public-private partnership. One local business owner, James Remuzzi of Shepherdstown-based Sustainable Solutions, helped provide the resources needed for the project. He thinks that the buffer brings ecological, economical and social benefit.

James Remuzzi, owner of Sustainable Solutions

“These types of projects help generate what we call green-collar jobs, so this idea that doing things like tree plantings, doing watershed improvement projects, actually generates jobs,” Remuzzi said.

Others who helped get the project off the ground include Barbara Humes, a member of the Harpers Ferry Water Commission, and Susannah Buckles, landowner of the Gap View Farm, which contains the headwaters of Elk’s Run.

Barbara Humes, member of the Harpers Ferry Water Commission (left), and Susannah Buckles, owner of Gap View Farm (right).

“I think that this project serves as a great example of what could be done with other agricultural properties in the county,” Humes said. “I also think that it could serve as a way for the county ordinances to be looked at and perhaps revised in such a way that when a developer comes into a watershed area, that they could be more cognizant of how to protect open spaces in our zone of critical concern.”

Buckles is using her property to do just that. She thinks it is her responsibility as the landowner to give back to the planet and her community.

“As a landowner, we are stewards of the land, and we try to do the best we possibly can for our fellow living beings and the earth at large,” Buckles said. “I feel a great responsibility for that at this point in my life.”

Though this forest buffer has been finished, Buckles understands the importance of future projects around the state in order to better protect the state’s drinking water, as well as the land surrounding it.

“I think if more people understood the direct impact that these kinds of actions have in a positive way on our environment and our essential needs for water and air, I think that will go a long way towards having more of these projects available,” Buckles said.

McDowell Food Pantry Partners With Calif. Non-Profit To Get Clean Water For Locals

The Five Loaves, Two Fishes food bank sits on a narrow strip of land between Elkhorn Creek and U.S. Route 52 in McDowell County, West Virginia. Behind a black fence with a gate sits what looks like a bunch of small solar panels. The panels make a strange noise – almost as if a spaceship is about to take off.

Turns out these aren’t solar panels – they’re hydopanels.

“Basically what they do is pull the moisture out of the air,” said Bob McKinney, who manages the Appalachian Water Project. “And send it into those panels. And it’s filtrated. I’ve had it sampled and it’s pure drinking water.”

McKinney has worn many hats in McDowell County over the years – teacher, electrical contractor, and pastor to name just a few. Now, he manages the hydropanel project for Dig Deep, a non-profit organization that works with the local communities around the country to solve water access problems. In McDowell County, a lot of water infrastructure was put in by coal companies decades ago, and it’s simply wearing out.

“Some of the lines are getting pretty old, and they’re going to have to be replaced. And the pump houses and things like that are getting pretty old and they’re going to have to be repaired,” McKinney said.

In the meantime, Dig Deep helped install the hydropanels because people kept coming to the food bank asking for the same thing: water.

Bob and Linda McKinney say that people ask for water as much or more than they do food when they come to the Five Loaves Two Fishes Foodbank in McDowell County, W. Va.

Bob’s wife, Linda, who runs the food bank, greets clients who stop by. Jenny Jones, 88, is among those picking up water.

“I never thought I would be in a water line. And I thank God every day for these wonderful people working here,” Jones said.

But the hydopanels only produce about 200 gallons of water a month. Most people use about 100 gallons a day. So they help, but they don’t go far enough. Mavis Brewster, general manager of the McDowell County Public Service District – or PSD – said that people have to figure out their own solutions right now. For example, on Bradshaw Mountain, there is essentially no water system.

“They are having creek water hauled and they’re paying $30 for 1,000 gallons of water that they can’t do anything with except maybe flush their commodes,” Brewster said.

In Northfork Hollow, there is a water system, but it’s old and needs to be completely replaced.

24 hydropanels sit on a grassy lot behind a fence next to the Five Loaves Two Fishes Foodbank in McDowell County, W.Va. The panels use solar power to draw moisture from the air, eventually converting it into safe drinking water.

“That includes a water plant, lines, meters and fire hydrants so you’d be able to offer good, reliable water service to all of Northfork Hollow,” Brewster said.

That’s just one project the county needs.

None of this comes as a surprise to George McGraw, Dig Deep’s founder and CEO. In 2015, “CBS Sunday Morning” aired a feature highlighting the non-profit’s work in the Navajo Nation.

After the segment aired, McGraw’s office was flooded with calls from potential donors who wanted to help. But Dig Deep also got calls from people living across the country – from Texas, Alabama, and West Virginia – who also had no running water.

Dig Deep started looking for any data on U.S. water access, but ran into a big problem.

“No one could tell us how many people there were in the U.S. without running water and where they lived and why they were experiencing it,” McGraw said. “We may be one of the only countries in the world that’s not measuring [water access] on an active basis,” he said.

Dig Deep stepped into the gap, partnering with the U.S. Water Alliance and researchers at Michigan State University to figure out where access to potable water in the U.S. was a problem.

Appalachia and the Navajo Nation were two of several places that stood out. Despite radically different geographies – West Virginia is steep, rocky, and compressed, while Navajo Country is flat, arid, and spread out – the two communities struggle with access to potable water.

Emma Robbins, who directs the Navajo Water Project for Dig Deep, said not having access to basic running water is a lack of a basic human right.

McDowell County residents collect donated water during a water distribution at Five Loaves and Two Fishes Food Bank on Saturday, March 6, 2021, in Kimball, W. Va. Photo: Lexi Browning/DIGDEEP

“It’s really important to remember the vastness of the Navajo Nation. There are just all these different communities that are very far from water lines or they don’t live near a safe water source,” Robbins said.

Dig Deep works on a range of solutions across the reservation, Robbins said. During the pandemic, they’ve helped residents to pay water bills. They’ve also installed home water systems in another part of the reservation.

Sometimes, problems require their own unique solutions. “It’s not a cut-and-paste solution. People will say, ‘Well, I worked in a developing country somewhere else so this is going to work,’ and that’s not always the case,” said Robbins.

The organization is applying the same approach in McDowell County. The hydropanels are what McGraw calls a “welcome mat” project. Small projects like the panels help the organization get to know the community, he says.

Since installing the hydropanels last July, the organization has partnered with the PSD and local residents with a goal of extending high-pressure water lines to 150 homes in McDowell County this year.

For McKinney, it’s about improving the quality of life for people in McDowell County, something he has worked toward for decades. Clean water for everyone in McDowell County may not happen in his lifetime, he said. But you never know.

“I get a little frustrated things don’t happen when I want them to, but that’s just the way it is,” McKinney said. “We just have to be patient.”

For now, McKinney focuses on getting water to people when – and where – he can.