Representatives from 37 citizen groups fighting for “water justice” met Tuesday at the Capitol to release a letter of solidarity with Flint, Michigan.
The letter, dated February 9th, parallels the 2014 West Virginia Water Crisis with the water crisis currently unfolding in Flint.
“Two years ago, we stood in those same lines, visited local emergency rooms, and demonstrated in the halls of power because our water, too had been poisoned,” it says. Crystal Good, a West Virginian who had been affected by the 2014 West Virginia Water Crisis read the letter at Tuesday’s press conference.
The letter and subsequent speeches from group leaders also called for government accountability and the protection of safe drinking water in West Virginia.
“Working together across race and class in the aftermath of this disaster, we are making real change. We don’t have all the answers, but we are gaining ground for safe, reliable water here in West Virginia, as you are in Flint, Michigan,” concluded the letter.
Other speakers called for The Public Service Commission to continue their investigation of what went wrong in West Virginia in 2014 and for congressional members to pass, instead of block, proposed federal water protections.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.
In an ongoing look at water infrastructure challenges in the southern region of West Virginia, we consider possible health effects of long-term exposure to contaminated water sources. First: the health impacts of industrial contamination, as well as naturally occurring pollutants.
Southern West Virginia is home to some of the worst health disparities in the country. Recent studies show folks in McDowell County, for example, have the shortest life expectancies in the country; it’s the 6th poorest county in the US.
The question ever is: Why?
Interim Chair of the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences at WVU’s School of Public Health, Dr. Michael McCawley says, all roads lead back to socio-economic status, and lack of economic opportunity. Science these days is full of research that studies how cycles of poverty and stress, and feeling like you have no choices in life, leads consistently to poor health, and shorter life spans. Pin-pointing what exactly makes someone ill, though, is almost impossible, McCawley says, because life is so complicated. But he says long term exposure to compromised water… is bound to leave a mark.
“That’s going to cause infectious disease, gastrointestinal problems, and that can lead to all sorts of other things,” McCawley said.
Industrial Contamination
An aquatic biologist from Wheeling Jesuit University, Dr. Ben Stout, found himself invested in water quality issues in southern West Virginia when he began looking into ecological impacts of Mountaintop Removal over a decade ago. Stout began looking specifically at stream impairment in areas where dirt and land from the tops of ridges were pushed into valleys.
“It was pretty obvious to me that below valley fills, water was pretty tainted, and then it became a question of, ‘Is it getting into the human water supply?’” Stout said. “I started sampling people’s houses; some people’s water is really good, other people’s water is really appalling.”
Stout has tested for and found water spiked with heavy metals and other contaminants.
“Before it’s disturbed it’s a good of water you’re going to find anywhere on the planet. But after that it becomes tainted with heavy metals and bacteria and so forth and becomes unusable except that these people don’t have any recourse,” Stout said.
It’s been widely reported that industrial activity has contaminated community water supplies throughout the state.
Naturally Occurring Pollutants
But aside from industrial activity, Stout points out that naturally occurring minerals and metals (like manganese) can themselves be a cause of serious concern—contaminants that leach naturally from the geology of the region. The effect of manganese specifically hasn’t been investigated thoroughly, but a 2010 drinking water study found that “exposure to manganese at levels common in groundwater is associated with intellectual impairment in children.”
And Stout explained, it’s not easy to get dissolved metals out of water.
“Heavy metals don’t turn into anything else when you boil them,” Stout said. “Mercury stays mercury, and aluminum stays aluminum.”
Stout said over a period of time, people exposed to these contaminants through a variety of pathways such as drinking or showers become ill.
But for all of the concerns about water compromised by natural and industrial sources, and the cancer, decay, infection, and disease that can come with regular exposure to that contamination, many experts agree that the biggest threat in water supplies throughout southern West Virginia (and many areas in the state) and by a long shot israw sewage.
While the chemical spill in Charleston left 300-thousand people without access to clean water, folks in the coalfields deal with water issues every day. We heard from folks in McDowell communities living off dated water systems that frequently go without water. Some communities have been on boil water advisories for years.
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Infrastructure
Region One Planning and Development Council planned water and sewer projects.
Eric Combs with the Region One Planning and Development Council says there are 58 water and sewer projects expected in the near to distant future in McDowell, Wyoming, Monroe, Summers, and Mercer Counties.
“There is a great need through out the whole but it seems like there is a greater need per say in Southern West Virginia,” he said.
One re-occurring challenge is replacing dated systems left behind by coal companies. Jennifer Hause with the West Virginia Water Research Institute can vouch for the system in Gary, her hometown. Hause says during the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s her father maintained the water system as an employee of U.S. Steel. Around that time, the company began to pull out and close mines in the area. In this video, local historian and Wyoming County Circuit Clerk David “Bugs” Stover explains that the region has an abundance of water. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMiOH856-M8
It’s a common story throughout the coalfields of West Virginia although some communities didn’t necessarily keep water operators. In neighboring Wyoming, County Clerk Mike Goode explains.
“As the coal companies moved out they abandoned those utilities and the citizens had to take over those,” Goode said.
Goode and other elected officials made it a priority to replace the coal camp water systems and is proud to share success stories about places like Copperston, Wyoming and Glover where it was the folks in the communities making the repairs and doing what had to be done, to get water in their homes.
“Those people would get out in the middle of the night older people you know 70 and 80 years old in the middle of the night they’re out digging up a water lines trying to fix a leak. It’s not supposed to be that way in America.”
Despite the struggle to maintain these dated, crumbling systems, throughout the region, it seems the communities left with the coal company plumbing were the fortunate ones. Some places don’t have systems at all. But they make do with what they have. Jennifer Hause paints the picture she saw at Coal Mountain on the Wyoming, McDowell County border a few years ago.
"Their source of water was a reused gasoline tank that set up on the hillside that collected water from a spring," she said, "then a series of garden hosed brought it down the hill basically to another storage tank that someone would go and add a few gallons of bleach to ever so often.”
Hause says it’s pretty typical for the coalfield region.
Residents are resourceful and resilient with these circumstances. For some folks, it’s the Abandoned coal mines are often used for a source of drinking water too.
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A pipe comes out of an old coal mine in Itmann in Wyoming County where some folks gather drinking water.
like this one in Itmann in Wyoming County where a pipe comes out of the side of the mountain on the side of the road.
Folks often stop to fill up. County Circuit Clerk David Bugs Stover grew up just a few miles from here in Pierpoint.
Abandoned coal mines are often used for a source of drinking water like the one at Pierpoint in Wyoming County, where County Circuit Clerk David Bugs Stover grew up.
“All that water gravity feeds and sometimes it’s treated and sometimes it’s not,” Stover said.
Stover says it was a true community system with its own set of challenges.
“I remember one time my mom didn’t have water for 3 months,” he said. “It can almost drive you to the point of insane.”
“So as much as I felt and did feel for the folks in Charleston, I know what it’s like to go months and if you want water you go carry it out of the creek.”
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While pickup trucks hauling water was an unusual site in Charleston last year during the chemical spill, it’s common and a part of every day life for folks in the coalfields.
Self-Proclaimed “Mountain Folk”
Some folks use a cistern to store and collect water.
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A cistern collects water carried from gutters off the house in McDowell County.
There are folks in the region proud of their independence.
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Terry Johnson lives on Burke Mountain in McDowell County where resident haul water to use in their homes.
Terry Johnson is a self proclaimed “mountain man” and gathers water for his community. He says he wouldn’t have it any other way. Some folks accepting of what they call the sacrifice of ‘mountain living’ while others really aren’t interested, or can’t afford a water bill.
“You have people that are third or fourth generation that they have to carry their water and a well with a lot of iron and they don’t know that there’s a better life,” Mike Goode said.
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Some folks are growing impatient on what they call “broken promises” for access to clean water.
While there are others that are growing impatient with what they call ’empty promises’ for access to public water. But mountain springs and abandoned mines can be good sources of water–some of the best water in the world, in fact. Marc Glass with Downstream Strategies says folks still should just be cautious.
“Your ground water needs to be protected the same way,” he said.
Several systems have been replaced but there is still more work to be done. For many folks in the coalfields today, a crumbling sometimes-abandoned coal industry water systems, mountain springs, streams, and store-bought bottled water are the options. And they can’t live without water.
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A family stops to gather water for their home in McDowell County.
It was some ten days before all of the families affected by the tap water ban following Charleston’s chemical spill were able to return to life as usual within their homes. And many did just that, once again drinking, cooking and bathing with water straight from the tap. The same, however, can’t be said for every family in the valley including Lida Shepherd, who says she still won’t drink the water.
Lida Shepherd and her two-year-old daughter, Lucia live in a small apartment on the East End of Charleston. Lucia loves tea.
This time last year, tea wasn’t so easy to make. Lida and her daughter were one of many families directly affected by the January 9th chemical leak.
“When I first got the word of the chemical leak, and the chemical spill, it was very frightening,” Lida remembered, “It was very frightening to turn on the water, and that smell was, I mean it gave me headaches, I mean I had a, definitely like a physical reaction to it.”
Her reaction was similar to hundreds of Kanawha Valley residents’ reports to their doctors.
Lida and her daughter now use city water to bathe and wash dishes and laundry in, but they still refuse to drink from the tap. Instead, Lida drives 20 miles to her parent’s farm in Sissonville to collect 4 to 6 gallons of water each week from their well. It’s a practice she began a year ago when the water use ban was still in place.
“It certainly has had lasting effects on me,” she said, “It’s now, even when I travel anywhere, whereas before I absolutely, I would just drink water from tap where I go, that’s not the case anymore. I always just sort of think about where I am, and like what’s going on with the water here? There’s definitely some sort of lasting fears, and like I said, I still don’t drink the water.”
Lida is an advocate for West Virginia Free, an organization that focuses on rights for women, and she also works with the American Friends Service Committee where she directs a youth leadership program in Boone County, an area also affected by the spill.
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wikimedia Commons
“They grew up in communities where not being able to drink the water comes up a lot,” Lida noted, “This was not a new experience for them to get word that the water wasn’t safe. And so when the chemical spill happened, some of them very much reacted just like, I’m not dead yet, literally that’s one of the girls said, she’s like, oh I’m showering in it.”
Lida says some of her students, however, felt angry at their lawmakers, blaming them for letting this happen or in some cases continue to happen.
After the spill and hearing from her students, Lida says it empowered her to want to make a difference in her state. She’s often advocated for stricter regulations and held a fundraiser at the time to provide bottled water to those who needed it.
“Reflecting on the year after the chemical spill, what we’ve been able to achieve and organize around, I’m pretty impressed by. I think because Charleston, you know, sort of a population center was largely impacted; it shed light on an issue that was an issue before this chemical spill,” she said.
As for Lucia, Lida says her daughter will continue to have tea parties with drinks made from her parents’ well water. At least, for now.
