A nonprofit organization is connecting homes in Wyoming County with tap water service for free.
A nonprofit organization is connecting homes in Wyoming County with tap water service for free.
A lot of people in parts of West Virginia have had inconsistent access to water, but for people who live on mountains, getting water can be even more challenging.
It’s about a 30 minute drive from the main road in Bud to the top of Bud Mountain. Many residents used to have a community well until it ran too dirty to use, they say.
Even after the local public service district ran main water lines, most of the residents couldn’t afford the personal hookup costs, until now, thanks to a nonprofit called Dig Deep.
It’s a haul to get to the construction site. On the way up, houses are spread out, so it’s hard to believe that there are more than a hundred homes that need water hookups.
Jessica Lilly
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WVPB
Danny Byrd’s home on Bud Mountain was one of the houses to receive new water lines.
Beartown and Herndon Heights are two communities on this mountain. Dig Deep’s Appalachian Water Project Manager Bob McKinney hired a team of contractors to install new, high pressure water lines from the main line to the homes. The project to bring reliable tap water to residents began with a survey to find out which homes can access the new PSD water lines.
“We’ve come up and done surveys of the places that have had [main water lines] run,” McKinney explains. “We’ll come up and do an interview with the homeowner to see if they want us to help and if they do then we’ll come up and start running lines.”
That’s when the construction crews come into the picture.
“What we’re doing right now we’re putting in water lines,” water and sanitation technician Buckey Osborne said.
Jessica Lilly
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WVPB
Workers dig a ditch to lay a new water line on Bud Mountain in Wyoming County.
The water lines are higher pressure and faster service than the current black plastic lines.
“We are digging the trenches to get it ready to run the service line to them,” Osborne said. “We are running them up to the house.”
On a warm, sunny spring day, two men are working behind a home to dig space for the new water lines. There’s only a few feet from the back of the house to a steep cliff. In places where the backhoe won’t fit, workers have to dig with shovels.
“They had a lot of trouble with the old line so they are coming in and putting new service in,” Osborne said.
The homeowner, Danny Byrd, has lived in the house for about 17 years.
“When I first moved up here they had a community well, but the water was nasty and red,” Byrd said, “Wasn’t good for much but showering and flushing the toilet. It was pretty rough. We had to bring our own drinking water up here for several years.”
Byrd explained that the community would collect water, at the bottom of the mountain.
“Down at Herndon at the bottom of Jug Holler,” Byrd explained. “You know where the hose is. That’s about where all of us got our water from.”
Byrd is semi-retired. A back injury has kept him out of work for a few years. He admits that the cost to connect to the main line would have been a tough expense. He gladly accepted the help from Dig Deep.
Jessica Lilly
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WVPB
Danny Byrd grew up in Wyoming County and has lived in his house on Bud Mountain for 17 years.
“So far, it hadn’t been any expense at all,” Byrd said. “They’ve provided everything, even installed it to the house. I asked them what charges there were going to be and he said none. Yippee!”
Dig Deep’s Bob McKinney said the crews plan to run lines to 33 more homes in communities like Herndon Heights and Beartown on Bud Mountain. They expect to be finished connecting more than 120 homes total by the end of July.
Justice C. Haley Bunn of Oceana in Wyoming County is the youngest woman to serve in the post, the court said. The ceremony was held Thursday.
The West Virginia Supreme Court’s newest member has joined the court in an investiture ceremony.
Justice C. Haley Bunn of Oceana in Wyoming County is the youngest woman to serve in the post, the court said. The ceremony was held Thursday.
Bunn succeeds Evan Jenkins, who resigned in February. The term expires in 2024.
She graduated with honors from West Virginia University and the West Virginia University College of Law and was in private practice in Charleston before spending seven years as a federal prosecutor.
Bunn prosecuted West Virginia doctors for illegally prescribing opioids, as well as opioid dealers and distributors. After leaving the U.S. attorney’s office, she rejoined Steptoe & Johnson law firm.
Tax season is a time that some Americans plan and save for all year. But it’s not always as easy as filling out paperwork before starting work. For independent workers or small business owners in southern West Virginia, it’s one of the most challenging parts of the job.
Nationally, ninety-four percent of the net job growth from 2005 – 2015 was in alternative job markets. With the downturn in the coal industry, some West Virginians are being forced to look to alternative income sources.
A recent report found and documented the challenges that come with being an independent worker in five southern West Virginia counties.
The study was part of the Benefits U project and meant to help better understand the challenges of independent workers in southern West Virginia and test a solution.
Diane L. Browning, project manager for WISER’s Rural Retirement Project, helped to interview independent workers in southern West Virginia.
“There is a widespread need for benefits,” Browning said. “Benefits are an economic stabilizer for a lot of people, (who are) self employed, (they) don’t have easy access to that.”
The study found that independent workers needed help with three main areas of benefits; taxes, emergency savings and retirement savings.
“Unlike employees, their taxes aren’t withdrawn. When they make income, they’re obligated to calculate the amount of taxes they owe and set it aside,” Browning said. “And really, most people just come to terms with that at tax time and find that they owe money.”
The report is part of the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, or WISER, and the Rural Retirement Project. The Benefits U project focuses on independent workers including freelancers, hairdressers, childcare providers, tattoo artists, gig workers, small business owners, entrepreneurs and more.
“They feel like they don’t have much money to save when they have trouble making ends meet,” Browning said. “If someone doesn’t have enough money to get the new tire on their car, they’re going to be tapping into their retirement savings.”
Throughout the region, Browning heard stories from West Virginians who had found a way to provide for their family through side jobs, entrepreneurship and service providers but needed help to provide benefits on their own.
“I mean really (the stories) broke my heart, like a guy that had overcome a drug problem, but he really had a hard time getting a job,” Browning said. “So he was doing landscaping on his own and taking care of his four year-old daughter living with his mother.”
Though broadband connectivity or wifi is still inconsistent, financial technology could be a solution because most residents are familiar with online banking and have access to technology.
“I guess the happiest surprise was just how wired we are. And even in the back hill and holler, people have asked for access to smartphones,” Browning said. “And they’re pretty sophisticated about using them. So there’s a lot of opportunity for delivering good services via financial technology.”
The Benefits U project also tested a “FinTech,” or financial technology, solution called Catch. It’s a company that basically does the math for independent workers using a formula that the worker sets up with a smartphone or computer. As the website says, the worker selects benefits, links to a bank, and determines the percentage of each paycheck to set aside.
“One of the messages we heard from in this research is that people really rely on trusted messengers, trusted people in their family, their friends, their co-workers for financial information,” Browning said. “So we are going to promote this financial technology platform with independent workers through organizations that serve them.”
The Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement is helping to raise awareness about Catch within the independent worker community across the state beginning this week, by turning to trusted resource centers in communities across the state. WISER is first partnering with Mountain Heart, a childcare agency, to help spread the word about this platform. The organization also plans to partner with farmers and tech groups such as Central App, a tech training firm.
This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight. For more stories from Mountain State Spotlight, visit www.mountainstatespotlight.org.
Veronica and Carl Allen have lived in Wyoming County their entire lives. Like many residents of the state’s southern coalfields, they’re older and have health problems that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19. For months they’ve lived in fear that they might contract the virus.
Last week, they got a glimmer of hope. On Jan. 13 Gov. Jim Justice made vaccinations available to people 70 and older.
But there was a problem. Instead of getting the vaccine through a local doctor or the county health department, Veronica and Carl were told they’d need to drive more than two hours from their home in Clear Fork to Greenbrier County.
“I was really sorry to hear that they sent our vaccines to Lewisburg,” Veronica Allen said. “I couldn’t stand a trip like that. There’s no way.”
The Allens aren’t alone. In an effort to accelerate the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to West Virginians, the state has been holding a series of centralized vaccination clinics in January, mostly focused in the state’s most populous counties. This is the latest pivot in the state’s vaccination plan, following a surprise announcement at the end of December that left health departments scrambling to begin vaccinating the general public.
“We have been successful in vaccinating tens and tens of thousands,” said Justice, who has been making the rounds in national media coverage of the state’s vaccination successes. “We’re just going to stay right on that.”
But the approach has come with significant downsides. The state’s centralized facilities are less accessible to West Virginians living with high rates of poverty and pre-existing conditions which make the coronavirus especially lethal. Only one of the 10 poorest counties in the state has had a vaccine distribution clinic anytime in the last three weeks, according to an analysis by Mountain State Spotlight.
Map by Ian Hodgson
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Poorest counties
Last week, Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s coronavirus czar, acknowledged the problems.
“We need to continue to push vaccines to the communities where people live,” Marsh told Mountain State Spotlight. “It certainly sounds like we need to give more help to the folks in McDowell County and Lincoln County and other places.”
And on Thursday, the state announced plans to expand its vaccination hubs so there would be one in each of West Virginia’s 55 counties by early February.
Until then, Justice is urging everyone who’s eligible to make use of the existing vaccination clinics, but health care workers say the current hub system has placed certain West Virginians at an unfair advantage and left rural residents to fall behind.
“The thing that really makes my blood boil is that there’s not equal access,” said Dr. Joanna Bailey, a family physician who serves residents in Wyoming and McDowell — two of the state’s most impoverished counties.
Several of her patients lack access to transportation or have physical ailments that make traveling long distances difficult, if not impossible. But leaving the county is a requirement if patients want to be vaccinated soon.
Last week, Lewisburg was the designated vaccination site for residents living in nine counties, including Bailey’s patients in McDowell and Wyoming.
“There’s no chance in hell that my poor patient from McDowell County is going to be able to travel to Lewisburg on a day’s notice to get a vaccine,” Bailey said. “If the state wants to set up vaccine clinics rather than going through local providers or health departments, that’s fine, but make it fair and make it accessible.”
Despite dozens of vaccines being designated for patients from McDowell County, only three residents on a list of more than 100 were able to make the trip, a health department official said.
A similar problem arose in other counties, too. In Lincoln County where elderly residents who wanted to be vaccinated had to drive up to 45 minutes to Cabell County or go without the vaccine.
“This system is not only unacceptable, but morally wrong for the people that don’t live in one of the counties selected to be a hub,” said Allen Holder the director of emergency services operations for Lincoln County. “Lives in the country matter, too.”
With little notice, some health departments were left unequipped, understaffed and without a communication system in place to efficiently take calls, book appointments and answer questions. In some places, senior citizens waited in lines for hours. In others, some patients were mistakenly given antibody shots — used to treat coronavirus patients — rather than vaccines.
Despite these challenges, demand for the vaccine was plenty. And in more rural counties like McDowell, Wyoming and Lincoln, health officials were vaccinating residents quickly. The biggest question they had was when they’d be getting more doses.
Courtesy
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McDowell County Health Department. Photo courtesy McDowell County Health Department
Those doses never came. The state pivoted and sent large quantities of vaccine to centralized locations in more populous areas instead of distributing smaller numbers of doses equally among all 55 counties. Marsh says it’s largely a matter of logistics.
“Our goals are to create a series of locations that would be able to conveniently serve the population of West Virginia,” he said. “As we are trying to immunize people in the state that aren’t at a facility like a big hospital or big nursing home, we are trying to create vaccine [hubs]… that everybody in West Virginia could access.”
Doing so effectively, said Marsh, requires a large quantity of vaccines, which the state has not received yet. Right now, the clinics are as good as it gets, Marsh said.
The state is planning to address these inequities in early February when it anticipates more doses will become available.
But in the interim, West Virginia’s older rural populations are still waiting.
“If we are only allotted 20 vaccines, that’s fine. Give us 20 vaccines and we’ll get them in people’s arms,” said Bailey, the doctor serving residents in the state’s southernmost counties. “But don’t say ‘there are 50 [for people from McDowell] but they have to travel to Greenbrier to get them.’ That makes no sense. It seems like vaccines are being administered to patients who have the most resources instead of the least.”
Bailey said it’s a sign of both systemic inequality and racism built into health care. Most of her older patients live with chronic diseases that make them more likely to die if they contract COVID-19.
Chronic illnesses like heart and lung disease are especially concentrated in the state’s poorer rural counties. Data analysis by Mountain State Spotlight found that McDowell County has the second-highest rate of resident deaths due to cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease in the state, topped only by Mingo County, which also went without vaccines.
Map by Ian Hodgson
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Sickest counties
Wyoming County had the third highest rate of residents to die from chronic respiratory disease.
Of the 46 clinics to be announced by the state since Jan. 7, only two — in Logan County on Jan. 21 and 22 — will take place in any of West Virginia’s 10 poorest counties.
Poverty isn’t the only factor affecting health. National data shows that Black communities are far more likely to suffer from pre-existing conditions that make the coronavirus lethal. Black residents are also more likely to work in retail and service positions where they may be exposed to the virus.
Yet data on state vaccine distribution shows that Black residents in West Virginia have been vaccinated at about half the rate of white residents in the state.
In the absence of data
Although West Virginia is currently leading the nation in its vaccination rate, and gaining accolades for doing so, the state has primarily aimed for the low-hanging fruit, beginning with health care workers and nursing home staff, and now including some teachers and those who work in higher education.
But as the state receives more doses of the vaccine and moves to vaccinate the general population — people 65 and older as of Jan.19. — the task becomes trickier.
“When you have to get the vaccine distributed out as widely and as quickly as possible, the inequities that already exist have the potential to be further amplified,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, director of adolescent and young adult medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Miller has been heading an initiative to encourage vaccination in under-resourced communities.
“Rural communities have been devastated by lack of access to preventive services and comprehensive care,” she said. “It is absolutely critical that rural communities are front and center of vaccine distribution.”
Miller said the key is to find balance between getting the vaccine out as quickly as possible through major distribution hubs — which is what West Virginia is currently doing — and prioritizing the most vulnerable residents who may be difficult to reach. That, she said, is best accomplished through communication with the people working on the ground.
“We have to rely on leaders in our rural communities and listen to them in terms of where and who should be leading the vaccine distribution planning in those areas,” Miller said.
Shweta Bansal, a disease ecologist at Georgetown University, said the choice to target more densely populated areas through vaccine hubs could more rapidly reduce the spread of the coronavirus, but not necessarily drastically decrease mortality.
“One of the arguments for vaccinating in urban centers first would be to prioritize those who transmit most,” Bansal said. “[But] it’s actually quite clear that we really should be prioritizing the most vulnerable first. And the rationale isn’t just an ethical one.”
Evidence from past infection outbreaks shows that prioritizing vulnerable populations like the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions is the best way to reduce the number of deaths.
Like Miller, Bansal said the best way to reach these populations is through direct outreach by health care providers who already serve the community.
One problem researchers like Miller and Bansal see is a lack of data to monitor who is getting vaccinated and where.
West Virginia’s COVID-19 dashboard, maintained by the state Department of Health and Human Resources, displays the number of vaccines distributed by age group and race, but does not record where vaccinations were administered or the number of residents vaccinated by county.
“Data transparency opens doors to more responsive and targeted vaccination campaigns,” said Bansal, who helped develop COVID-19 Vaccination Tracking which collects vaccination data from across the country. Data tracked by her team shows that at least eight states, including Ohio, Illinois and Florida are reporting vaccination data by county, and Bansal said that more should follow suit.
“Without detailed vaccination data, we will continue to be a few steps behind the devastation that the virus is causing,” Bansal said.
‘I just hope I can get that vaccine real soon’
Both experts in-state and out will tell you that rapid vaccine distribution is really hard. It will get better with time.
But the lag-time has its costs, and those costs are being borne by the most disadvantaged residents.
Everyday without the vaccine is a day patients like those served by Bailey are denied access to what could be the difference between life and death, between another hug with a close family member or never seeing them again.
Nathan England
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The former Wyoming Hotel in Mullens, West Virginia.
While residents of counties with clinics are afforded quick access, people like Veronica and Carl Allen from rural Wyoming County face obstacle after obstacle.
Carl, 77, used to work as a coal miner. Later, he worked doing masonry for the Department of Education.
Veronica is a former school bus driver, but after severe glaucoma left her nearly blind, she went to work at the council on aging.
“I’d look at those senior citizens, bless their heart, and I’d think one day that will be me,” Veronica said. “And here I am.”
Veronica is homebound and uses a wheelchair. She has chronic respiratory disease. Carl has suffered several strokes. He’s had a heart attack and has lung problems, and has to wear a machine to help him breathe when he sleeps.
They don’t have any family or kids, but neighbors come into their house a few times a week to help them clean and get their groceries. If either of them got COVID-19 they’d be extremely high risk.
It’s people like them who the current plan has let slip through the cracks.
If West Virginia’s latest iteration of the plan comes to fruition, there will be a clinic in Wyoming County in the next two weeks. But until that actually happens, Veronica and Carl will be waiting.
“I just hope I can get that vaccine soon,” Veronica said.
Reach reporter Lauren Peace at laurenpeace@mountainstatespotlight.org.
Coal operator W. P. Tams died on August 3, 1977, at age 94. Tams studied engineering at Virginia Tech before going to work in 1904 for coal operator Sam Dixon in the southern West Virginia coalfields. Four years later, Tams launched his own company, known as Gulf Smokeless Coal in the new Winding Gulf Coalfield. He founded the Raleigh County town of Tams as his company’s headquarters and later acquired another coal operation in neighboring Wyoming County.
Tams was an unusual coal operator in several ways. First, he retained his company’s independence at a time when most operations were being consolidated into large conglomerations. He didn’t sell out until he retired in 1955. Another thing that separated Tams from other coal operators is that he lived his long life in the same town as many of his miners. The town of Tams was a model coal camp for its time. And his modest bachelor home was no larger than those occupied by most of his miners. His major indulgence was a sizable personal library. W. P. Tams is considered the last of the old-time coal barons.
Darrell McGraw was born in Wyoming County on November 8, 1936. After graduating from Pineville High School, he earned degrees from Berea Academy and West Virginia University, where he served as student body president. He also served a stint in the army.
In the 1960s, he opened a private law practice and was a legal counsel to Governor Hulett Smith and the legislature. A staunch Democrat, McGraw was elected to the state Supreme Court in 1976, one of three liberals elected to the court that year. The outspoken justice was a lightning rod for conservative critics for court cases such as the 1978 Mandolidis decision, which expanded the rights of injured workers to sue employers.
McGraw was defeated for re-election as attorney general in 1988 but was elected state attorney general four years later. In his 20 years in that position, McGraw emphasized consumer protection and won important settlements with a direct-mail operator and against the tobacco industry.
Darrell McGraw was defeated for re-election in 2012 by Republican Patrick Morrissey. And in 2016, he was defeated in another bid for the state Supreme Court.
