Northfork Water Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Water Outages and Advisories Continue in W.Va. Coalfields

While the chemical spill in Charleston left more than 300,000 without usable water, it’s a problem that folks in the coalfields deal with on a regular basis.

Mountainous regions like southern West Virginia have an abundance of water, but the terrain along with aging infrastructure create challenges, just as it has for decades.

Many of the current water systems in place today in the coalfields were installed in the early 1900’s by coal companies. The coal operators, jobs, and most people left the area, leaving remnants behind of a once bustling economy. Remnants like some beautiful buildings, coal tipples …and water systems.

For some communities a boil water advisory is a way of life … like in Keystone in McDowell County where residents have been on advisory since 2010. Neighboring sister city of Northfork has been on a boil water advisory since 2013. The water systems are currently maintained and operated by individual towns, but the McDowell County Public Service District is planning projects to take on those responsibilities.

Elkhorn Water Project

Just this past year, a project with several phases started that is expected to bring relief to the region.

Phase I of the “Elkhorn Water Project” will bring a new water system to Elkhorn, Maybeurry and Switchback. Phase II will replace systems in Elkhorn, Keystone and Northfork and Phase III will upgrade systems in Landgraff, Tidewater, Divian, Kimball.

Elkhorn Water Project broke ground summer 2014.

Phase I broke ground this year and is expected to be complete in June. Executive Director of the McDowell County PSD Mavis Brewster says she’s happy with the progress. She says the second phase has not yet been funded. That’s where Betty Younger lives.

Betty Younger: Times have Changed

A coal miner’s daughter, Betty Younger grew up in McDowell County and remembers a very different community during the 1950’s. Younger sits on her front porch which sits close to route 5–a road busy with coal trucks. She reminisces about her days in the Kyle coal camp.

Like so many coal-dependent communities, McDowell has suffered the boom and bust of the industry, and the sharp population decline that comes with it. In the 1950’s there were more than 100-thousand people. Today less 20-thousand remain in the county.

“This part of McDowell County is… I mean there’s nothing here,” Younger said.

Younger has lived in her Elkhorn homes for about six years. There have been so many water issues… she just assumes not to drink it, rarely uses it for cooking, and doesn’t even count on regular access.

“You never know when you’re going to have water,” Younger said.

Phase II will also replace systems in Northfork and Keystone. Folks in Keystone have been on a boil water advisory since 2010, while Northfork has been under an advisory since 2013.

Elkhorn water tower believed to be at least 60 years old.

When all three phases are complete, the project will replace the system that Younger and other residents currently rely on. Phase I will replace a leaky, rusty, tank that is believed to date back to the 1940’s when it was set up by coal companies.

A water project in Wyoming County began last year when residents in Bud and Alpoca (including an elementary school) were caught in the middle of a tangled and complicated water system deal. After months under a boil water advisory, a project to bring residents dependable, clean water is now underway.

Northfork Water Woes: A Failing System

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.

The water system is located inside a cinder-block building in Northfork along the Elkhorn Creek River.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Living Without Consistent Water Service: A Northfork Way of Life

Governor Earl Ray Tomblin lifted the state of emergency for nine counties on Friday. It’s been about seven weeks since 300,000 customers lost access to clean water after a chemical leaked into the Elk; a river upstream from the intake to West Virginia American Water’s treatment plant.

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.”

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.