Tag: SWV Water

Rural Water Association Looking For New Operators

Many of West Virginia’s water and wastewater operators are expected to retire in the next few years, according to the Brookings Institute and a report from the Water Research Foundation called the Water Sector Workforce Sustainability Initiative.

Todd Grinstead, executive director of the West Virginia Rural Water Association, says his organization is working to help raise awareness about career opportunities in the industry.

“We recognize that a lot of young folks coming out of high school don’t really understand what a water operator does, or wastewater operator does,” Grinstead said. “They don’t realize there’s sciences, biology, there’s technology, there’s electronics, all this is in stuff that they’re interested in, they just don’t realize.”

Grinstead and other staff at his association are planning to spend time at job fairs, vocational centers, and high schools to showcase job opportunities and a new apprenticeship program.

The program formalizes the process to reach certification status. A certified water or wastewater operator must complete about 4,000 hours, or two years, on the job and pass a certification test. The National Rural Water Association has developed an apprentice program to help states across the country meet these requirements in a structured, formal way.

While trainees in the state still need to complete hours on the job, the RWA apprenticeship program creates specific areas of experience to ensure all important areas are covered in a logical order.

“Once an apprentice gets started with a system, there is a mentor assigned to that person. It’s usually a chief operator or somebody who has a lot of years and a lot of knowledge at the water system or the wastewater system that actually will mentor this new person,” Grinstead said.

West Virginia recently changed the state RWA program to include online applications. Grinstead expects the newly approved apprenticeship will help young people enter the workforce.

“The apprenticeship program will allow an employee that’s already employed at a system to go ahead and start the program to become a certified operator,” Grinstead said. “This also allows somebody that doesn’t even have a job in the industry, they can apply.”

The new trainees are important. Some communities in West Virginia don’t have certified operators at all.

“Some of these systems, they don’t even have somebody that can be a mentor to teach them that system,” Grinstead said. “So that’s a problem. I’m not sure how we can get past that.

“The money has to come from somewhere to be able to pay these folks. I don’t know what the magic answer for that is. But it does happen,” he added. “And it’s our desire to add more operators to the field. And hopefully there’ll be enough eventually to get moved around and these smaller systems can hire somebody that’s certified that can do the job and do it correctly and those safely.”

The National Rural Water Association funds the project by paying the salary and benefits of the workforce development administrator as well as material for promotion.

EPA Looking To Fund Innovative Projects That Support Careers In Water And Wastewater

The U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency is offering up to $1 million in grants that support career opportunities for the drinking water and wastewater industries. Funds will also go towards campaigns that connect locals to these careers.

The federal program is called the Innovative Water Infrastructure Workforce Development Grant Program. Individual grants range from $200,000 to $500,000.

The EPA wants to fund targeted internships and education programs for K-12 and college students. Projects supporting continued education for those already in the field are also welcome.

Submissions are due March 26th.

PA Graduate Students are Looking for Creative Solutions to Massive Rural Water Infrastructure Needs

On a rainy, chilly fall day, the research team and I leave from a hotel lobby in Princeton. It takes us about an hour to get to the Elkhorn Water Plant. Outside, water from an old coal mine flows swiftly down the mountain.

This is the source of tap water for this district. Operators say it’s good water, that while treated, doesn’t require an intense process like reverse osmosis to get it ready for the tap.

The graduate students are trying to get a handle on the context and history of the water systems in the region.

Karl Russek is one of the students in the Master of Environmental Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania.

“It’s hard for someone who is not from the area to kind of get their head around some of the challenges faced without really having a chance to see the area,” Russek said.

Karl and other graduate students listen to a local representative of the public service district, explain the massive challenges they have in maintaining these small water systems.

Jared Brewster explains that a lot of these systems have been in disrepair for over fifty years, and so just getting these systems up and running properly would costs millions of dollars, and years of work. 

Credit Jessica Lilly
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Jared Brewster shows University of Pennsylvania students a water plant in McDowell County, West Virginia that needs to be replaced.

Those same challenges face water systems in rural communities all over the united states, to some degree. But as graduate student Karl Russeck notes, the problems facing coal country are worse than most. He grew up in a coal town in Pennsylvania.

“I think a lot of the demographic challenges and a lot of the socioeconomic challenges are very similar to where I grew up,” Russek noticed. “One of the differences is when the mines did shut down in the 50’s there was still enough economic critical mass that the communities could survive a little longer. They’re hollowing out like small towns across the country are hollowing out but it’s not quite as geographically isolated as parts of Central Appalachia.”

The team is first working to identify where existing mechanisms fall short. Replacing infrastructure is not cheap, and sometimes paying higher bills or writing a grant in a tiny community just aren’t options.  

“There are a lot of people doing some very hard work and some very good work but the existing tool kit is not built to handle some of these problems because there’s just not the scale necessarily,” Russek explained, “the number of people involved, the number of customers to be  able to support systems and how these projects are supported in other parts of the country.”

Another graduate student working with Karl is Mahvish Ilyas. She says visiting the region provides an opportunity for the students to connect some of their studies to the people it could possibly impact.

“It just diversified our understanding of the problem,” Ilyas explained. “This is a diverse issue but at the same time we have so many opportunities.  We have the opportunity of leveraging funding, starting meaningful conversations with the communities, introducing technology and creating jobs and we had a very interesting conversation with the mayor of Northfork.”

Northfork is a town in McDowell County that’s been on a boil water advisory for years. The advisory will end when the system is replaced or there’s another solution put in place.

“It just showed  the local administrative bodies they are willing to become a part of the solution,” she said. “They were so welcoming when they heard about our project.”

The goal is to come up with suggestions for community leaders in southern West Virginia. Students hope that specific solutions for this region could inspire water infrastructure solutions in other rural communities.   

“This would serve as a baseline study,” Ilyas said. “I’m sure there are a lot of research papers and articles out there but nothing has been consolidated to this level.

The team is still compiling the results. It’s not clear when the result will be released.

This story is part of an episode of Inside Appalachia about water infrastructure in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia.

Wyoming Co. Jury Says Coal Activity Did Not Damage Well Water

A jury has ruled in favor of a coal company in Wyoming County Circuit Court. The verdict came in Thursday afternoon after only a few hours of deliberations.

Fifteen families accused Dynamic Energy, a subsidiary of Mechel Bluestone Inc., of contaminating their water supplies. The trial began in April.

The families said that Mechel Bluestone violated the West Virginia Surface Coal Mining and Reclamation Act and damaged several wells along Cedar Creek Rd. in Clear Fork.

Water testing presented by the plaintiffs showed high levels of arsenic, aluminum, lead, iron and other pollutants.

Representatives of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection testified that there was no correlation between a nearby surface mine and the wells.

Mechel Bluestone Inc. is owned by front runner for state Governor, Jim Justice. Justice sold the mine to a Russian Company in 2009 but bought it back last year.

The company responded to the verdict in an email. Chief Operating Officer for
Justice Management Services with Bluestone Industires, Inc Tom Lusk said,

“I want to thank the Jury, our attorneys, and the people from Wyoming County for seeing through this attempt by Plaintiff’s Attorneys to extort money from an already struggling industry.
Fortunately, the facts meant more to this Jury, of Wyoming County Residents, than distortions and absurd attempts to allege that Mining harmed these water wells.  Thankfully, this frivolous lawsuit did not end in more harm to our good West Virginia coal miners and their families.”

David Barney, an attorney for the families who filed from Cedar Creek, said they will appeal.

What Does it Take to Build New Water Systems in the Coalfields?

This week, we’ve been talking about water in the coalfields. We met folks that deal with frequent water outages and boil water advisories because of crumbling water systems, and heard stories of folks living with no water source at all. We also learned that proper sewage disposal is still a challenge.

 

Progress has been made. Just this past year, the Elkhorn Water Project began. It’s expected to bring clean water to folks living in several coal camp communities along Route 52 in McDowell County. A project in Wyoming County is expected to bring a permanent solution to water issues in Bud and Alpoca.

 

So what does it take to build a new water utility in West Virginia? Well, apparently it’s complicated and depends on the scenario but here’s a breakdown.

Let’s say a community would like to get hooked up to a neighboring water system.

The community would file a formal petition to the closest utility which would fill out an application, which I’m told, isn’t as simple as it sounds.

If they’re requesting funding from the state, the utility has to go through the infrastructure and jobs development council.

Part of the process involves surveys to see if the community wants access to public water. Goode has worked on several water projects in the region during his 30 year tenure as an elected official and explains how surveys can complicate the situation, as they did in Hanover.

Goode says the project hit roadblocks like a lack of funding, which in turn meant they had to resurvey the population, more roadblocks, another survey.

Now the people are at the point where they’re just not willing to fill out any more surveys.  

Once again, it’s a unique situation.

Then there’s Coal Mountain. We heard about this earlier in our series. The community depends on a gas tank on top of a hill that feeds water hoses into another holding tank.

“It’s too far removed to run a water line from another system,” he said. “They do qualify for some Abandoned Mine Lands available but it’s not enough to do what needs to be done.”

That’s usually the biggest challenge; money. It can come from a variety of different sources. Several communities in the coalfields have benefited from Abandoned Mine Land money. It’s federal funds provided by a tax on coal companies.

The money is used to repair damages done by coal companies prior to 1977,  when Congress enacted the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. But there’s not enough money to fix even the “high priority health and safety related” sites which are things like unsealed mines or unstable hillsides, let alone several new water systems.

Shane Whitehair with the Regional Planning and Development Council says that another popular souce comes from Small Cities Block Grants. He says that fund usually has about $13 million for new projects. He says the requested funds for water and sewer alone is usually between $60 to $80 million.

So, getting water to rural places through these conventional means is just expensive and sometimes the the Public Service Commission says the residents can’t afford to pay the inevitable utility bill.

It’s often a challenge to find a way to bring water into rural homes, but Goode points out, it’s not impossible. The most important part, is community interest.

Goode is retiring after this term. After more than 30 years of walking miles of red tape, and navigating bureaucratic mazes he says water is fundamental. Working to provide his community with cleaner, reliable water has been the most rewarding aspect of his work.

Still, he’d like to see the process simplified and perhaps a central entity that handles critical water infrastructure.

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