$4 million for ailing Kentucky water district announced ahead of annual SOAR Summit

Officials announced nearly $4 million in grant funding for an ailing Eastern Kentucky water district Thursday ahead of an annual summit in Pikeville aimed at promoting job growth and improving health in the region.

Gov. Matt Bevin and U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers spoke in Inez to announce $4 million for the Martin County Water District, along with an additional $3.37 million for the county’s Eastern Kentucky Business Park.

The announcement coincided with the sixth-annual Shaping Our Appalachian Region Summit, a gathering that began in 2013 in a scramble to reimagine the faltering economy of Eastern Kentucky. The summit will continue through Friday afternoon.

Martin County’s water district has made headlines over the past two years for often failing to provide reliable, clean drinking water to its thousands of customers. The district has been plagued by long outages, shaky finances and scathing reports of poor quality from county residents.

Thursday’s announcement will bring the district’s total approved grant funding to more than $8.5 million since February 2018.

Rogers and Bevin said Thursday that the district will receive $2 million from the Abandoned Mine Lands Pilot Program to pay for a new booster pump station, a 250,000-gallon storage tank and 1,000 linear feet of water lines, among other things. Another grant, nearly $2 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will pay for improved water service to more than 250 homes.

“Our goal today is to help Martin County take the next steps in the complex process to repair the failing water system once and for all, and this funding will go a long way to make that happen,” Rogers said in a news release. “In addition to addressing the water crisis, Governor Bevin and I also announced critical funding for site preparation at the Eastern Kentucky Business Park. Together, these grants address infrastructure and job creation where it’s needed the most.”

Nina McCoy, chairwoman of the Martin County Concerned Citizens activist group, which has campaigned for improved water service in the county, said she hopes the money is “spent properly to help our county residents to receive safe, clean, reliable drinking water.”

“In the past, much money has been wasted by outside agencies, engineers and contractors with little regard for the people who pay a water bill every month,” McCoy said.

Martin County residents have seen steep rake hikes since mid-2018, and some have voiced concern over an order from state regulators that would require the district to find an outside management company to assume day-to-day operations.

That could lead to even more rate hikes for a county where well-paying jobs are limited, residents have warned.

In addition to their speech Thursday in Inez, Bevin and Rogers are expected to make another announcement Friday at the SOAR summit related to KentuckyWired, the state-led broadband project.

The two-day summit serves as a watering hole for local and state leaders to share ideas and swap strategies to promote job opportunities and improve quality of life in the mountains, as well as a platform for politicians to make announcements related to upcoming grants and other funding sources.

Over the past six years, various projects supported by SOAR have led to more than 4,000 jobs across the region, but some large projects have either faltered or have yet to come to fruition, including KentuckyWired, which is two years behind schedule and $100 million over budget, and a battery manufacturing plant that never materialized.

Providing a backdrop to the SOAR Summit are at least two ongoing developments that highlight the struggles of Eastern Kentucky’s economy: the bankruptcy of Blackjewel LLC., a major coal producer that left hundreds of miners out of work and in financial distress; and a lawsuit from local investors against executives of Enerblu, the battery plant that promised hundreds of jobs in Pikeville but shut down before it ever began construction.

“Every good thing that happens, you have a setback,” said Jared Arnett, SOAR’s executive director. “You have Blackjewel, you have another layoff, you have Enerblu that felt like we were making momentum and then it just disappeared.”

Arnett argues that those failures make SOAR even more valuable and necessary. Setbacks highlight the need for an organization to provide hope for a better future, and to hold local and state leaders accountable for projects that Eastern Kentucky will need even more as other projects fall through, he said.

“We are at the tip of the iceberg. It’s like we got the Titanic turned, ‘cause it’s been going this direction for 60 years,” he said. “We’re not just an economic development organization, we’re trying to reimagine, we’re trying to change attitudes, we’re trying to re-instill hope — I mean, very human, personal things at the same time while we’re trying to tactically do the things to turn the region around.”

In 2013, SOAR, with input from local and state leaders, developed a Blueprint for the future of Eastern Kentucky’s economy. It includes seven main objectives: develop Broadband access; train a “21st century workforce”; create and expand small businesses; improve health outcomes; promote industrial development; develop local food sources; and establish Eastern Kentucky as a premier tourism destination.

“SOAR exists to make sure that plan doesn’t sit on a shelf,” Arnett said.

This year’s summit will contain workshops on each of the Blueprint’s points, with some special emphasis Thursday on SOAR’s increased focus on small businesses.

Last year, SOAR announced it would open eight new offices throughout Eastern Kentucky to assist small business owners and develop new businesses in local communities. Those offices have hosted three, 9-week startup classes since the project began.

On Thursday, the group hosted a pitch competition to highlight 10 business ideas and award a $5,000 prize to the winning pitch. SOAR will also announce a new website called Startup Appalachia, which Arnett envisions as a resource for any individual or group who plans to open a business in Eastern Kentucky.

“We’re seeing the leading indicators that things are headed in the right direction,” Arnett said. “We feel like not having the summit every year would change the whole dynamic of what’s happening in Eastern Kentucky.”

This story was originally published September 5, 2019 at 3:16 PM with the headline "$4 million for ailing Kentucky water district announced ahead of annual SOAR Summit."