CHARLESTON, w.va. — The chemical spill in January that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians around Charleston has brought national attention to issues of water safety. But many rural West Virginians outside the reach of the spill have been living without tap water for drinking for months — or even years.
The residents of Bud, a small town in southern Wyoming County, haven’t been able to drink from the tap for six months, ever since the owner of Alpoca Water Works — the small water plant that had served the community for decades — died.
When that happened, the plant shut its doors and the water situation “deteriorated rapidly,” said state Sen. Daniel Hall, a Democrat who represents the affected area.
“It is a terrible situation that should not have happened, and those people fell through the cracks. It is taking time to get resolved, but it will be,” Hall said.
Regional water authorities say they don’t know when Bud’s 430 residents can expect to drink tap water again.
Lack of money, crumbling infrastructure and the deteriorating quality of well water have left scores of rural residents in southern West Virginia without tap water that is safe to drink or bathe in.
Mavis Brewster of the McDowell Public Service District, which provides water to 3,000 customers, said there are scores of small municipalities with water systems that have been in use since the coal boom of the 1930s. Those systems are disintegrating, with old pipes breaking frequently. Residents often are under water-boil notices or experience water outages.
Between 2,000 and 3,000 people in McDowell County itself do not have access to clean tap water or suitable well water, she said.
“I’m 54 years old and, as long as I can remember, people have collected water from a spring or old mine source up on U.S. Route 54 in Maybeury. Any time of day you can see trucks loading their tanks,” she said.
Roadside collection sites are often a single PVC pipe jutting out from an embankment.
Summers County Commissioner Jack David Woodrum said some residents in his southern county face poor water quality or well contamination from septic systems that empty near or into water systems. Many have water filtration systems that are costly and must be replaced on a yearly basis because the water corrodes them so badly.
