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Anawalt’s water quality and access has been compromised by a water system that desperately needs an upgrade. But the McDowell County Public Service District hasn’t been able to secure funding for one.

Stepp, 75, is tired of waiting.

“We’re running out of time,� Stepp said. “At 75 [and] up, you’re beginning to run out of time on this earth. ... They say, well, in a couple of years, the funding will come up, or in a couple of years, you’ll be in line. And I get upset about that because we’re not promised tomorrow.�

No one knows more about Anawalt’s need for a water system overhaul than Stepp’s husband Jerry. He’s the president of the McDowell County Public Service District board. He’s served on it since 1998.

“Anawalt is [our top] priority,� Jerry Stepp said. “It’s number one.�

Anawalt’s system is leaking the most out of the 15 systems the public service district checks on every day, Jerry Stepp said. The culprits, he said, are old pipes and tanks.

The McDowell County Public Service District has no funding for what he estimated would be a $7 million expense to cover just the first phase of an upgrade that would include a new water tank and benefit at least 200 to 250 people, Jerry Stepp said.

But despite the Anawalt project being on the public service district’s to-do list for the last seven years, Stepp said, federal and state funding agencies haven’t come through with funding. Attempts at boosts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council, haven’t yet yielded funding support, he said.

Jerry Stepp was quick to note that federal and state funding agencies “have done extremely good for us� by supporting other projects in McDowell County, recalling that seven different agencies were providing funding for a sewer infrastructure project in the Iaeger area.

But it troubles him that projects like the Anawalt upgrades are unfinished.

“It’s really disheartening sometimes that we cannot get what we really need,� he said. “But we’re not the only egg in the basket. There’s just so much money, and it has to be spread around with all the counties. It’s hard to get.�

West Virginia state officials have come under fire for spreading around money from a grant fund used mainly to support water and sewer infrastructure for recipients throughout the state with projects have nothing to do with water or wastewater — and one recipient not based in the state at all.

Water Development Authority sued over grant for Ohio college

The West Virginia Water Development Authority in October approved a grant award of up to $5 million from the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund — a fund that mainly has been used to support water and wastewater projects — for a newly launched Catholic school in Ohio.

The Water Development Authority’s $5 million award was for Steubenville, Ohio-based College of St. Joseph the Worker, whose inaugural class began lessons this fall. The college combines a bachelor’s degree in Catholic studies with instruction in construction trades.

Documents the Gazette-Mail obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request suggests the College of St. Joseph the Worker allowed use of Economic Enhancement Grant funding may be narrower than what the college proposed.

In an email to college dean Andrew Jones sent Oct. 10, the day the authority approved the grant, Water Development Authority executive director Marie Prezioso said the grant must be used for a project that consists of “the acquisition, construction and equipping of multiple education facilities for the in-class and on-site training� of construction trades: HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), carpentry, masonry, electrical and plumbing. A project description in the grant agreement sets the same parameters.

The school’s Economic Enhancement Grant proposal, obtained by the Gazette-Mail through a Freedom of Information Act request, indicated the school plans to use $1 million of its $5 million grant for “advocacy activities� that include building a research center called “The Center for the Common Good� that supports “broadly life-affirming policy in West Virginia.�

The college said in its West Virginia expansion proposal its faculty have been involved in supporting anti-abortion and migrant apprehension measures West Virginia supported under then-Gov. Jim Justice. Justice administration officials serving as designees on the Water Development Authority board helped approve the $5 million authorization for the school.

The Economic Enhancement Grant Fund was created in 2022 via , which established the fund through $250 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to support water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades as well as what the law calls “infrastructure projects to enhance economic development and/or tourism.�

The on Monday sued the Water Development Authority in Kanawha County Circuit Court over its $5 million award for the College of St. Joseph the Worker, claiming it violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion.

About 20% of grant funds not for water, sewer projects

Many Economic Enhancement Grant Fund recipients have been towns, cities and public service districts getting support for water and wastewater improvement projects.

But recipients not falling in those categories have received tens of millions of dollars.

Of $432.4 million awarded through the fund via American Rescue Plan Act monies as of Dec. 19, just over $80 million, or 19%, was awarded to projects listed as economic development projects rather than water or sewer projects, according to Water Development Authority records. Of 161 projects awarded, 28, or 17%, were economic development projects rather than water or sewer enterprises.

Of those 161 projects, just four — 2.5% — were for water or sewer projects in Boone, Logan, McDowell, Mingo and Wyoming counties. Those are West Virginia’s southern coalfield counties struggling with dwindling populations and, accordingly, shrinking ratepayer bases to support water and wastewater infrastructure improvements.

Meanwhile, during fiscal year 2023, the Water Development Authority approved $4.38 million for renovations at the Keith Albee Performing Arts Center in Huntington and $3.8 million for a new Marshall University baseball stadium. Both projects were categorized as “economic development� projects.

Neither the Governor’s Office under Justice nor Prezioso responded to requests for comment.

Southern coalfield counties also have been underrepresented in funding sought by the state for its Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which aims to address water quality problems through building, upgrading and expanding wastewater facilities.

In June 2024, the state submitted an intended use plan for the state Department of Environmental Protection-administered fund for state fiscal year 2025 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Projects requesting fund assistance are prioritized using a ranking system. Three categories — public health, regulatory compliance and affordability — were used to determine project scoring.

A Gazette-Mail review of the list found that despite rampant water concerns and disproportionately low income levels, McDowell and Wyoming counties had no projects among the list’s top nine entries.

The relative dearth of state support for water and wastewater projects in the southern coalfields doesn’t sit well with the Rev. Brad Davis, an elder in the United Methodist Church serving five churches throughout McDowell County.

“The imbalance of where the funding is being directed again just goes to show that our public officials don’t give a damn about us,� Davis said. “And you can quote me on that, preacher or not.�

‘Everybody deserves clean drinking water’

Davis has helped coordinate area water distribution efforts, including to residents of the McDowell County city of Gary on a monthly basis and — with greater frequency — distributions to Anawalt area residents. Davis reported the December distribution in Gary provided water for 176 households and estimated roughly 50 households in the Anawalt area have been getting water distributions.

“It’s my parishioners that go door to door and give water out to folks,� Davis said.

Betty Stepp has been helping out as one of Davis’ parishioners from Jenkinjones United Methodist Church.

“I’m just an old lady that’s trying,� she said. “I’m going to do what I can for my friends and neighbors till the very end.�

Betty Stepp gets frustrated when she recalls a retired miner who is also a Vietnam veteran buying water in neighboring Mercer County and carrying it home in a little red wagon after his wells went bad.

“That just upsets me that someone who had served his country, had worked all his life after that, retired, barely able to walk, is having to carry his water,� she said.

“Everybody deserves clean drinking water,� Davis said. “From the perspective of a native of the southern coalfields, we, perhaps more so than anybody, the people that built this state, that built this country on our our broken backs and our blackened lungs, deserve to be given the necessities of life,� Davis said. “We should not have to worry about what’s coming out of our taps. That should be the least of our worries.�

But McDowell County residents have reported tap water ranging from orange to black ruining their clothes.

DEP spokesman Terry Fletcher said data collected by the agency hasn’t indicated any public health or safety issues related to mine water discharges in McDowell or Wyoming counties exist. Fletcher said results show parameters associated with coal mining activity are meeting state water quality standard criteria for both aquatic life and human health.

But Leigh-Anne Krometis, an associate professor and public health researcher at Virginia Tech who has studied central Appalachian water access and quality extensively, has observed drinking water throughout the region has such high levels of “nuisance contaminants� like iron and manganese that it’s not what she would call “potable water.�

Noticeable effects of secondary maximum contaminant level exceedance for iron include a rusty color, metallic taste and reddish or orange staining, according to the EPA. Manganese exceedance yields a black to brown color, black staining and a bitter metallic taste.

“No one would drink that water,� Krometis told the Gazette-Mail in an interview last year.

Studies Krometis has conducted have found many central Appalachian residents don’t trust their discolored water, traveling miles away to roadside springs to consume bacteriologically compromised water.

Davis and others in McDowell County have said some residents fill up on water at a spring along Route 52 in Maybeury.

“It’s depressing to think that we’re living in America where everybody ought to have access to clean water and sewer,� Jerry Stepp said. “And still yet, we don’t have it.�

‘Small people get looked over’

In one of his final announcements before leaving the Governor’s Office Monday to become a U.S. senator, Jim Justice announced the Water Development Authority had approved $25.9 million in funding for 17 water, sewer and economic development projects. Of the $25.9 million, $9.1 million wasn’t for water or sewer projects, including $900,000 for the Bridge Sports Complex in Harrison County and $2.5 million for upgrades to a multiuse development project located in the downtown Wheeling Historical District.

During a phone interview Friday, Adam Ortiz, outgoing Mid-Atlantic regional administrator for the EPA, pointed to significant investments in clean water made under a Democratic-controlled Congress through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

In October, the EPA announced over $49 million for water infrastructure in West Virginia, with funding to flow through the state-level Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds

“There’s a long trajectory here, but I think for the first time perhaps since the New Deal, the amount of resources and attention going to the systems are going in the right direction,� Ortiz said.

But Betty Stepp isn’t counting on political leaders coming through, recalling calls to Justice’s gubernatorial office and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.’s office that haven’t paid off.

“Small people get looked over,� she said.

West Virginia Delegate Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, whose emails show he guided College of St. Joseph the Worker leaders toward the Economic Enhancement Grant, was named House majority leader last week.

“The funding is there,� Davis said. “We know this. They just sent $5 million across the state border that could have gone a long way [toward] fully funding the Anawalt project.�

McDowell countians searching for hope — and not just bottled water — to hold onto can find it in each other, Davis believes.

“I don’t think anybody here has any hope that our political leadership is going to do anything to help us,� Davis said. “Where we do have hope is in ourselves. Organizing and coming together and saying enough is enough, and taking it upon ourselves to get things done.�