Funding totalling $2,710,000 is going to both Hardy County and the Eastern Panhandle town of Romney as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Grant Program.
Funding totaling $2,710,000 is going to both Hardy County and the Eastern Panhandle town of Romney as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Development Grant Program.
The program is part of a commitment by the USDA to “improve the economy and quality of life in rural America,” according to the agency’s website.
“The funding from the USDA will help more West Virginians reliably access clean water and make distribution more efficient for all residents,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said in a release.
Money for Romney will help upgrade the town’s water distribution lines and treatment facilities. The funds are being awarded as a combination of loan and grant funding, with $1,554,000 being loaned alongside an extra $850,000 in grant money to help.
Hardy County’s Public Service District is also receiving a $291,000 grant to help construct new water and waste disposal facilities in Moorefield. Flooding in June of 2018 damaged the county’s water lines as well as the district’s office building.
The grant will help construct a new office building for the agency at the Robert C. Byrd-Hardy County Industrial Park, including a garage for maintenance and storage of parts, vehicles and equipment.
The construction project previously received $1,460,000 in loan funding, according to a release from the USDA.
The USDA previously announced another $10 million to help improve water safety in the state last December.
With toxic “forever chemicals” being detected in waterways statewide, the pollutants have caught the attention of both the public eye and state legislators.
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.
The Mountain State is receiving funding for water infrastructure from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is providing the City of Milton and Tyler County with $4,370,000 through the Rural Development Water and Wastewater Disposal Grant and Loan Program.
Milton will receive a $2,552,000 grant and a $1,000,000 loan to address inflow issues with its wastewater collection system. The funding will assist in extending the Milton sewer collection system along U.S. Route 60 and add a lift station to the Salt Rock Public Service District.
Tyler County will receive a $500,000 grant and a $318,000 loan to expand water distribution from Boreman Elementary to Centerville and Alma, expanding drinking water and fire protection to more residents. The funding will assist the construction of a new storage tank to prevent water shortages during dry periods. Funding will also go toward a new booster station for the water system.
“It’s not a want for water, it’s a need,” the Tyler County Public Service District general manager and chief water operator, Tina Lancaster, said. “The residents; most of them haul water daily.”
Rafters and kayakers who travel the New River Gorge go through water that feeds in from several sources. One such waterway is Piney Creek. According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, as far back as the 1970s Piney Creek has contained sewage and high levels of fecal coliform, aluminum and iron. In 2002, the DEP listed Piney Creek as one of the worst-polluted streams in the state. A group of citizens formed a non-profit, called the Piney Creek Watershed, to help clean up the pollution.
Stormie Surface and Dayton Copeland are recent high school graduates in Fayette County and live near Piney Creek. For their first radio piece, Stormie and Dayton interviewed Corey Lilly, executive director for the Piney Creek Watershed Association, to get an idea of the progress his group has made to make it safer for residents in Fayette and Raleigh Counties to drink their water. This is an excerpt of that conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
Stormie Surface: Do you know what the current status of the Piney Creek watershed is?
Credit Courtesy Casey Cunningham
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David Smith kayaking in Piney Creek. Smith is seen here dropping one of the bigger rapids on the creek as he makes his way down to the New River.
Corey Lilly: The current status is it is an impaired stream, so this creek is heavily impacted by the development of the city of Beckley. There are more than 20 sewer plants along the creek, and historically those have been providing a lot of sewage drain into the stream. With the recent upgrades it’s improved quite a bit.
Copeland: Where does Piney Creek flow and what other rivers are affected by it?
Lilly: Piney Creek flows into the New River Gorge, and it is a National River protected by the federal government. And there’s a large tourism industry that surrounds the New River. Every year tens of thousands of people come to the area to recreate in the New River Gorge. So there’s a big push to try to increase the quality of the water in the New River Gorge because we don’t want people getting sick. We want people to be able to go out and recreate and have a good time.
One of our most successful jobs has been at the YMCA soccer complex in Beckley. There was a barren piece of land from an old mine site that our organization found funding for, and we were able to clean it up and plant a lot of vegetation and bring in some gardens that helped bring back some insects that were needed. And so we reduced the soil load that went into the stream, as well as planted vegetation and brought back some of the wildlife there.
Credit Courtesy Joel Sullivan
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A litter clean up organized by the Piney Creek Watershed Association.
Copeland: And while improving the drinking water for thousands of people is the main purpose of the watershed, Lilly said he also sees a lot of value in getting people out in their community, working on projects together.
Lilly: We want to help those people in our community the best way that we can. I’ve personally received increases of quality of my life through outdoor recreation and being outside and being with friends and family in a healthy environment. The more people that we can get outside, the better our world is going to be.
Surface: Even though the coronavirus pandemic has put these community events on hold for now, Lilly said he hopes to be able to plan some type of a volunteer event sometime this summer or fall.
Stormie Surface and Dayton Copeland are recent graduates from the Fayette Institute of Technology. Their interview with Corey Lilly was part of a mentorship project with West Virginia Public Broadcasting, as part of their multi-media class.
New testing by the Environmental Working Group has identified the presence of toxic fluorinated chemicals, broadly known as PFAS, in the tap water of dozens of cities across the U.S. where contamination was not previously known.
EWG, an advocacy organization that tracks environmental pollutants in consumer products, sampled water in 44 places between May and December 2019. The testing revealed the presence of so-called “forever chemicals” in 34 water systems, including in the Ohio cities of Columbus and Cincinnati, as well as in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Previous testing from the group found 10 PFAS compounds in tap water in Louisville, Kentucky.
The so-called “forever chemicals” persist in the environment and in the human body and have been found in numerous water systems in the Ohio Valley. PFAS chemicals were used in flame-retardant foam sprays and in the manufacture of nonstick and stain-resistant products.
David Andrews, a senior scientist with EWG, said the new testing shows how frequently PFAS chemicals are found in water systems across the country.
“I think what really struck out to me is that we know these chemicals are widespread in blood, but it’s still shocking to see that many of these major cities across the across the country, at least all the ones we tested, had so many different compounds in their water,” he said. “And at levels that were somewhat striking in terms of their potential for impacting health.”
Two per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals — PFOA and PFOS — have been linked to negative health effects. A medical study of more than 70,000 people exposed to PFOA, or C8, dumped by DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia, linked exposure to the chemical with multiple health problems from cancer to reduced immune function.
All of the newly-tested systems reported levels of PFAS chemicals lower than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory of 70 parts per trillion, with the exception of Quad Cities, Iowa. The EWG report says water tested there showed 109.8 ppt of PFAS.
Some researchers believe EPA’s health advisory is not protective of human health. A recent study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences suggests that safe levels of PFAS chemicals are as low as .1 to 1 parts per trillion.
The EPA is currently debating whether and how to set legally-enforceable drinking water limits for some PFAS chemicals. Meanwhile, a handful of states have taken action to set more protective drinking water standards.
A group of Democratic West Virginia lawmakers announced plans Monday to introduce legislation to regulate a group of toxic, man-made fluorinated chemicals.
Del. Evan Hansen, who represents most of Monongalia County, and a group of colleagues, said the “Clean Drinking Water Act” would address the release of per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, also called PFAS chemicals. The class of chemicals includes C8, or PFOA, the chemical produced and dumped in the Parkersburg area for decades by chemical giant DuPont.
The effect of the chemical and related events were recently brought to the silver screen in the blockbuster film, “Dark Waters” starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hatheway.
Hansen said the bill, which is still being drafted, would require facilities that use or produce PFAS chemicals to disclose that information to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP would be required to monitor these facilities and regulate their discharges of these chemicals into waterways. Currently, PFAS chemicals are unregulated nationwide.
The second component of the bill would set legally-enforceable drinking water limits, or Maximum Contaminant Levels, for some PFAS chemicals.
The legislation comes at a time when both U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators are increasingly testing for, finding and seeking regulations for these so-called “forever chemicals.”
In recent years, a growing number of communities have detected PFAS in their drinking water. The chemicals are widely used including in everything from pizza boxes to flame-retardant foam sprays and in nonstick and stain-resistant products like Teflon.
Ohio announced in September it would begin monitoring water systems near known contamination sites. In Berkeley County, federal researchers are currently studying residents’ exposure to C8 after it was found at a water treatment plant in Martinsburg. The contamination was likely due to groundwater contamination from the Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base, which used PFAS-laden firefighting foam.
Research conducted in the Mid Ohio Valley after DuPont’s settlement over C8 contamination linked chemical exposure to six diseases including thyroid disease, as well as testicular and kidney cancer.
“I think we owe it to the citizens of West Virginia, especially considering we were ground zero for the impacts of many of these chemicals, we owe it to the people of West Virginia to take matters into our own hands,” Hansen said.
The EPA is currently weighing how to set drinking water standards for PFOS and PFOA. A handful of states have set their own limits, much lower than the EPA’s current health advisory of 60 parts-per-trillion.
Hansen said if the bill is passed, West Virginia would examine both EPA’s decisions and state actions. He also noted he hopes to put safeguards in the legislation so that if contamination is found, rate payers and cash-strapped municipalities won’t be on the hook for paying for cleanup.
“What we are going to get out of this is the chance of transparency,” said Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, which supports the bill. “Companies will have to tell us what is in our water.”
Rosser and others said clean water is key to boosting the state’s economy.
“The people of our state know polluting industries drive away clean industries,” said Del. John Doyle, a Democrat from Jefferson County.
When asked about the bill’s chances of making its way through the Republican-controlled Legislature, Hansen said he recognized it could be a tough sell, but said he’s open to hearing any ideas from his colleagues across the aisle or other interested groups.
“I don’t think clean drinking water is a partisan issue,” he said.
During the 2020 session, Hansen, who is an environmental scientist, said he also intends to reintroduce a proposed amendment to the state’s Bill of Rights that would enshrine clean air, water and the preservation of the natural environment as constitutional rights for current and future generations.
The measure was introduced last session and had more than 30 co-sponsors. Two other states — Pennsylvania and Montana — have adopted a similar constitutional amendment. If passed, the environmental rights amendment would serve as a guiding principle for state leaders and regulatory agencies.
