Poor towns lack safe water and sometimes have no water

Water in Keystone, W.Va.
(Photo by Gerald Herbert)

The goal of Congress in passing the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974 was to see that all Americans have clean tap water, but many rural communities lack the resources for it, so "Small water providers rack up roughly twice as many health violations as big cities on average," according to Environmental Protection Agency records, The Associated Press reports.

"It's small communities like Keystone, West Virginia, that more often are left unprotected by destitute and unmaintained water providers," Michael Phillis, Leah Willingham and Camille Fassett write. Resident Donna Dickerson told AP that her water supply was unpredictable: “Out of nowhere, the water would be gone, and we’d have no idea when it’d be back.” Typically such outages last a few days, AP reports, but "For 10 solid years Dickerson and 175 neighbors in the tiny, majority Black community of Keystone had to boil all their water. . . . A coal company had built the original system, but since left, leaving no one in charge." The system recently joined a local water district.

The drinking-water law allows state regulators to require changes by water systems, "but they rarely do, even for the worst offenders," AP reports. Josiah Cox, owner of Central States Water Resources, which buys problem utilities, upgrades them and recoups costs from customers over many years, told AP, "You start what we call the 'death spiral of these utilities' where they don’t have the resources to pay for what regulators are demanding."

Some smaller towns have been able to connect with neighboring cities' water systems but many rural areas are too remote: "Nearly 1,000 miles south in Ferriday, Louisiana, staffing is one problem, but the water has failed people in every major way. . . .You know your water is in trouble when it’s being distributed by the National Guard," AP reports. "Without a lot more money and more aggressive intervention in the worst places, experts say many Americans will continue to endure an expensive search for drinkable water, or else they'll drink water that is potentially unsafe."