Tammie Bailey’s water problem in Hampton Roads, Virginia, became worse when she realized she had a tap instead of a well
Virginia doesn’t have a megadrought like some parts of the United States, but it has water problems all the same: Homes and businesses in the Hampton Roads region, in the southeastern corner of the state, are drawing groundwater faster than it can be replenished. The situation has gotten so bad that the earth is sinking in some places.
They think they might have found a solution in the sewer. The region takes a million gallons of treated wastewater each day to be pumped into the Potomac Aquifer which is a major source of drinking water for the area. And there are plans to increase that to 100 million gallons in the coming years.
Around the country, cities and towns are increasingly turning to treated wastewater to augment their supplies of drinking water. Over the past 20 years, the number of drinking-water reuse projects has tripled according to data collected by the National Alliance for Water innovation.
The Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley is looking into options that were unthinkable in the past.
Tammie Bailey worries every day that her water will turn bad. That’s the smell of rotten eggs and rotting meat coming from her kitchen tap again. Worse still, that the water will be the soupy mix of sediment and contaminants that forced her to the homes of neighbors and relatives to cook and shower for weeks last summer.
She told CNN that last July she noticed the water was getting redder and the smell was stronger. She got new water filters, but they did not help. I came home and turned on my tap. This was my water,” she said, holding out a plastic bottle containing an orangey red liquid with the consistency of chocolate milk.
Bailey is dependent on water from a well. The neighborhood in Mohawk, West Virginia, is rural and looks like it would be outside a city. Back from the paved road, there are one- and two-story homes that sit on verdant lots. Water lines have never been built despite power poles being in the way. About 2% of Americans lack access to clean, running water and indoor plumbing.
Fourteen contaminants, including E coli, were found when Bailey had the water tested. Her well was pumping out water so polluted from natural and man-made runoff that all the pipes, fixtures and faucets inside her home had to be replaced, she said.
Coal mining and logging made this place prosperous. Some companies built their own water plants, but when the mining industries moved on, they left infrastructure and people behind as well as some bitterness.
“People have been exploited for many decades,” said a field engineer for the Appalachia Water Project. Some people have lived in places where logging and mining took away their environment, mountaintops were removed, vegetation was stripped down, and they had their lives on the line. They have to live with unsafe drinking water and unsafe Sanitation.
Some people have wells. Some tap into old water lines from deserted mines. Some haul water to their homes – filling up tanks and jugs, knowing which sources are clear enough for washing only and which they hope are good enough to drink. Even firefighters rely on rivers for water in some of the communities.
There is a sound of water in all of the towns of McDowell County. From rushing mountain streams to babbling creeks and the forks of the Tug River, this bringer of life is all around. Many people choose to fishing and head out on the ATV trails. As the water is polluted with human sewage, it is not worth the fish caught for dinner.
No municipal water service also means no sewers. With septic tanks impractical or too costly, pipes from homes carry the waste water straight to the streams.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act: Defending Water in West Virginia, and a Case Study in Iaeger, McDowell County, West Virginia
The Environmental Protection Agency is aware of the situation in the south of the state. Administrator Michael Regan visited late last year as part of his “Journey to Justice” tour to see what the agencies called underserved communities in need of environmental justice, a mission that has also taken him to Jackson, Mississippi, among other areas.
Regan toured a relic of the area’s past – a water pumping station – that’s still a key part of the present for at least 300 residents in Kimball who get their water from a central system.
There is a single pump, that looks rusted and ailing, with water spitting out of it to the ground. Light enters a gaping hole behind the pump through the roof that has caved in multiple times. If the pump goes down, engineers say, that is it. There will be no running water coming into the homes that rely on it.
“I walk into a building that’s leaking, that has ancient technology and people’s livelihoods are dependent upon this antiquated system,” he told CNN in December. Three hundred people are dependent on a 60- to 80-year-old pump not starting and a 120- year-old building not collapsing. This is not what we should be having in this country.”
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, signed by President Joe Biden in November 2021 and supported by both of West Virginia’s US Senators – Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Shelley Moore Capito – promises some relief.
About $50 billion in funding from the act is being earmarked for water infrastructure programs, the EPA said. West Virginia will get about $83 million for clean and safe water, and some is set to come to McDowell County, according to the White House. The EPA said the town of Iaeger would receive more than 1.5 million dollars to eliminate failing sewer systems.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/25/us/west-virginia-water/index.html
Regan and George, the water and sanitation technician, from DigDeep to San Diego, Californ, United States (SPCA, Nov. 1997)
But Regan’s December visit is raising the spirits of George, the water and sanitation technician from DigDeep. He spent time with Regan and said they talked a lot about fishing as well as water trouble. He said he was starting to see the light.
“Nobody should be living like this. If we can pay taxes … why can’t we get something as simple as a basic right like water to our communities, to our people,” he said.