There is something in the water in Virginia

Tammie Bailey’s water problems in Virginia haven’t stopped since the 1960s: “The water is rotten now,” said Kiparsky

Water scarcity is an issue in Virginia, just like in the United States, even though the state doesn’t have a mega-drought. The situation is so bad that some places are sinking.

They think they may have found a solution in the sewer. The region takes a million gallons of sewage and puts it back into the water source, which is known for its drinking water. Plans are afoot to more than 100 million gallons in the next few years.

The cities are using treated wastewater to supplement their drinking water supplies. Over the past 20 years the number of drinking-water reuse projects has more than doubled according to data collected by the National Alliance for Water Innovation.

“It is now necessary for us to consider options that would, in previous generations, be considered unthinkable,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tammie Bailey worries every day that her water will turn bad. That the smell of rotten eggs and rotting meat will come out of 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.

“Last July I noticed my water kept getting a little bit redder and the smell was a little bit stronger,” she told CNN. She got new water filters, but they did not help. “One day I came home and I turned my tap on … and this is what I got. She held out a plastic bottle with a red liquid in it that was like chocolate milk and said that it was her water.

It is a lot of frustrating. I don’t know why we can’t get help to get some lines down here,” she said. “I don’t know why, living in the country that we live, people don’t have running water.” Bailey said that she was helped by a non-profit organization that thinks that running water is a human right.

Bailey said she had the water tested and 14 contaminants were found, including iron and E. coli. All the pipes, fixture and faucets inside her home had to be replaced because her well was so polluted.

Coal mining and logging made this a prosperous place. Some companies built their own water plants, but when the extraction industries moved on and moved out, they left the infrastructure and people behind, as well as some bitterness.

The field engineer for the Appalachia Water Project said that people have been exploited for many decades. People who have lived in places where there were industries that took away the environment, where mountaintops were taken away, and where vegetation was stripped down by logging or mining are people who put their lives on the line. They are living with unsafe drinking water and poor Sanitation in return.

Some people have wells. Some people take water from old water lines. Some people go to great lengths to get water for their homes, filling up tanks and jugs in order to get water for drinking and washing. Even firefighters rely on rivers for water in some of the communities.

The small towns of McDowell County have a sound of water on a daily basis. This bringer of life is all over the place, from babbling creek to the forks of the Tug River. Fishing and ATV trails are popular with residents and visitors. But any fish caught are not for the dinner plate as much of the water is polluted with raw human sewage.

No municipal water service also means no sewers. Plumbing from homes brings waste water to streams, even if it’s too expensive or impractical to store it in a tank.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act: Bringing Water to the South, Helping the EPA in Iaeger, McDowell County, Virginia

In the south of the state, the Environmental Protection Agency is aware of the situation. 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. Above, the roof has caved in multiple times and light from the sky comes through a gaping hole behind the pump. If the pump goes down, engineers say, that is it. There are homes that rely on running water.

“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 relying on this 60-80-year-old pump not going out and this 120-year-old building not falling in. This is not what we should be doing 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. The White House said West Virginia will get $83 million for clean and safe water and some is set to come to McDowell County. The town of Iaeger will get over $1 million from the EPA to fix their failing sewage systems.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/25/us/west-virginia-water/index.html

Regan’s visit to DigDeep and the need for simple solutions in a changing world — George, the water and sanitation technician

George, the water and Sanitation technician from DigDeep, is getting a boost from Regan’s December visit. He spent time with Regan and said they talked a lot about fishing as well as water trouble. He said that he was starting to see the light.

“Nobody should be living like this. He said, “If we can pay taxes, why can’t we get something simple as a basic right for our people?”