Would you drink this?

March 23, 2008 09:30 pm

— PRINCETON — Getting clean water with the turn of a tap is taken for granted in many communities, but there are places when hard water wells and even swimming pools are used for supplying this essential of life.
In the Beeson area approximately 100 households have used makeshift measures for years just to have water for daily living, residents said recently at a meeting of the Mercer County Water & Sewer Providers. Wells that have been used for years just don’t deliver good water anymore, one woman said.
“I have five wells that are 200 feet deep, and only one works and it has bad water,” said Shirley Shrewsbury of Beeson. “My mother lives nearby and she hasn’t had water for years.”
To improve home water supplies, residents have paid for water to be trucked in or channel rain water from their rooftop gutters and into swimming pools, said Nilene Browning of Nubbins Ridge Road. And this water source is far from appealing, she added.
“It didn’t look too good last year,” Browning said. “You had frogs swimming in it, but if you need water, you’ve got to use it.”
Both Shrewsbury and Browning said while water lines are being installed in other areas around Beeson, their community still does not have water service.
“I don’t see why we can’t get a grant. Everybody else seems to get a grant,” Shrewsbury said. “Who do we talk to about a grant?”
Lyle Huntington of the Oakvale Road Public Service District gave the Beeson residents an example of the complicated process behind getting and implementing a water service grant. One project in Oakvale has taken years.
“We started on this vigorously in 1999 and we’re still working on it,” he said.
West Virginia receives only $20 million a year in federal funds for water projects, but this doesn’t go far when there are 55 counties, each one with communities that need water, Huntington said.
Water projects often assigned to the easiest places for the work, said Jerry Metheny, a supervisor with West Virginia-American Water. In this case, the Nubbin Ridge area is one of the most difficult “as far as pressure zones go,” he said.
“That area is going to cost a lot more than other areas,” he said. Needed equipment, a water tank and a booster station, could cost approximately $2 million.
A water project in nearby Spanishburg has cost $200,000, but that was just for doing design drawings, said County Commissioner Joe Coburn. He advised the residents to speak with the Region I Planning & Development Council in Princeton and to contact the office of Gov. Joe Manchin.
“You all put in a call to the governor and we’ll put in a call to the governor,” Coburn said. “You can’t put in too many.”
— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com

Photos

Shirley Shrewsbury of Beeson stands in front of water filtration and bleaching equipment in the basement of her home Sunday. The jar she holds contains water from the main line of her water supply before being filtered. Bluefield Daily Telegraph