‘It’s a money problem.’ Lack of funds holding back Martin County’s ailing water system
Like many Martin County residents, Angela Fry rang in the new year without running water.
A frigid, pre-Christmas cold snap tested the county’s long-ailing water system, causing multiple water line breaks throughout the county and leaving some residents without running water for almost two weeks. Bottled water was distributed for days and on Dec. 30, local officials declared a state of emergency.
Fry, a resident of the county for more than 20 years, said she spent much of her time outside of work just trying to get enough bottled water to drink and bathe.
“I had to pack water from my dad’s house or from work, back and forth, or buy water, and that’s to flush the toilet around here,” said Fry, who lacked running water for the better part of 12 days.
The emergency was another page in a decades-long saga that has left residents paying some of the state’s most expensive bills for water service — but many locally are afraid to drink it and service is often interrupted by leaks and low water pressure. The Martin County water system has a laundry list of needed infrastructure projects but has very little funding on hand to make serious progress.
“It’s been a money problem in Martin County for years, 20-plus years,” said Craig Miller, the division manager for Alliance Water Resources, the private company which began managing the county’s water system in 2020 after state regulators ordered past management to relinquish control.
In December, the county’s water board approved a budget which included $28 million in improvements for the system in 2023. However funding for many of the projects isn’t yet available, including over $20 million needed to replace lines where significant amounts of water are lost.
The system suffers from poor, initial construction techniques and a historical lack of preventative maintenance. Over the years, Miller said he’s been asked in countless meetings at every level of state government what they can do to help.
“My answer is always the same: I need money,” Miller said. “There are hundreds of millions of dollars out there going all over the place. Why isn’t some of that money coming to the Martin County Water District? That’s the question. Why is it so hard for us to get money to fix our problems, when they want to make it obvious that there’s still a problem?”
Miller isn’t the only one looking for funding. Lon Lafferty, the county’s judge-executive, told the Mountain Citizen last week that he’s seeking $60 million for the system and met with representatives from the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to make the county’s needs known.
“I’m not mincing words and not asking for an amount that wouldn’t suffice to fix the problem,” Lafferty told the Martin County paper. “I am asking for $60 million. I’m perfectly fine with that amount coming from different sources, but anything less will not do the job.”
‘Groundhog Day’
Over New Year’s weekend, the water district shut off virtually the entire system except for the treatment plant and the clear wells — which store millions of gallons of treated water before it’s pumped through the system, Miller said.
The temporary shutdown enabled the water level in the wells to recover after days of being drained. Miller said crews were also able to fix several large leaks throughout the county, enabling most of the water service to return. But some large leaks were discovered later. An elementary school in the county lost water and all county schools dismissed early on Jan. 6.
A major freeze has knocked out the county’s water system before. In January 2018, a countywide state of emergency was declared after water was shut off to thousands of customers for days following a pipe-freezing cold snap.
For Nina McCoy, the chairperson of Martin County Concerned Citizens, a group which has advocated for local residents for years, the start of 2023 felt a bit like the movie “Groundhog Day.”
“The main thing we need is just help with getting water lines, water lines that run,” said McCoy, who recently also became a member of the county’s water board. “It’s not fair to ask people to pay these high rates, when they’re paying for water that is getting dumped onto the ground.”
In the recent history of the water system, 2018 turned out to be an eventful year. Around the same time as the freeze, the water district said it was in substantial debt and only months away from financial collapse without a substantial rate hike.
“There was a period when it started to thaw, and a lot of the county was without water for about two weeks,” said Mary Cromer, an attorney for the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center who has worked with Martin County Concerned Citizens for years. “And so it turned into this real crisis that is very similar to what just happened in the county.”
An increase would have to be approved by the state Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates most utilities. The then-chairman of the PSC called the Martin County Water District “the worst water district” in the state and after months of hearings, the increase was approved but only if new, outside management was brought in to run the district. That eventually turned out to be Alliance.
In the past six years, the district has received nearly $8 million in federal and state grants to make improvements to the water system, John Mura, the state Energy and Environment Cabinet spokesman, said in an email. That money included about $400,000 in state funds awarded to the district last March through the Better Kentucky Plan’s Cleaner Water Program.
In addition to that money, last year Rep. Hal Rogers announced $1.5 million in federal funds to replace and build new water lines in the county.
Last spring, the PSC approved another rate increase for the district which raised the rate a typical customer pays to nearly $70 per month. The increase was double the amount of what Alliance said it needed, Miller said, but the increase has enabled the district to stop losing money.
Still, a “well-run utility” should be able to self-fund improvement projects as well as perform regular up-keep and maintenance, which Miller said would include replacing about 20 miles of water mains annually. One of the projects on the district’s improvement plan that doesn’t yet have enough money for funding is a $6.8 million water line replacement between a water tank and the county’s water plant. It’s roughly two-and-half miles worth of line.
Funding hard to find
At the same time, the district is still in debt, owns no working vehicles and also has to pay for constant repairs to a system that has numerous leaks.
“The water district doesn’t own a single vehicle,” Miller said. “They are all completely inoperable. The only vehicles, excavator and trailer that is in operation for that water district right now is owned by Alliance Water Resources that they provided to the water district outside of the contract.”
The system lost about 72% of the water it cleaned in November, Miller said at a quarterly workgroup meeting in December that the water district has with state officials. At the meeting, Miller said the rate was “abysmal, it’s not where we want to be.”
In 2021, the system had a water loss rate of over 73% — the highest in the state, data from the PSC shows.
Two other Eastern Kentucky water districts also lost over half the water they treated that year: The Rattlesnake Ridge Water District (64.3%) in Carter County and the Southern Water and Sewer District (54.8%) in Floyd County. No other district in the state eclipsed 50%.
Addressing the Martin County water system’s money problems with rate raises isn’t sustainable, especially in a county where many residents live below the poverty line, McCoy said.
“I think that our rates should be more affordable,” McCoy said. “But we’re just not getting the money we need from the state to do the work that needs to be done.”
Miller said he’s worked hard to secure funding through grants and other government programs. Last week Miller said he was told by the Kentucky Division of Water that he had applied for every source of funding out there and at this point “it’s just wait and see.”
“We have sent enough coal severance money down state to be able to expect some help from the state on this,” McCoy said. “Not just waiting for federal grants, but I think the state needs to send in some money.”
‘It’s not a people problem.’
Up until 2018, the water system had numerous violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act but a change in the way the county chlorinates its water has put the system back in compliance, Cromer said, adding that the quality of water may vary on a house to house level.
Residents still occasionally post videos online that show discolored water coming from their taps, Cromer said. The 2020 preliminary results of a study, which University of Kentucky researchers performed in conjunction with Martin County Concerned Citizens, showed that 47% of the water samples taken in the county had at least one contaminant that exceeded federal regulatory standards.
Many Martin County residents don’t drink the tap water. Fry, who didn’t have water for nearly two weeks, said she only uses it to shower and clean, never to drink.
“I have bought water all my life to drink,” Fry said. “Because this ain’t fit to drink.”
Water quality issues, past allegations of financial mismanagement and higher water bills have fostered distrust of the water district in the community and has often pitted the two against each other. Miller said the “visceral hate” he’s seen at times shown to the water district is “completely misplaced.”
“I can’t speak to what was done in the past,” Miller said. “I can’t even deny the potential things that happened in the past and where money went, who did what. I don’t know, I wasn’t here. What I know is that I’ve worked in or run six different utilities in my 16-year career and I know that what we’re doing is the right approach. It’s just not quick.”
What’s needed now, he said, is for people to stand together.
“It’s not a people problem,” Miller said. “Right now, it’s a money problem.”