That’s where the retired school teacher has filled the two five-gallon jugs, or — once the five-gallon jugs got too heavy — the eleven single gallon jugs, that have been her main source of fresh water for the past 16 days.
“I was determined not to take water from the people whose houses are messed up,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s home, which sits on the bank of the New River, wasn’t damaged in the floods. Her basement flooded in the storm, but only the yearbooks she kept from her years as an art teacher were damaged.
“I don’t have any problems,” Taylor said. “I just have an inconvenience.”
Taylor’s home was fine, but the water infrastructure in town wasn’t. The flood washed away pipes and damaged the water treatment plant.
The Kanawha Falls Public Service District, the utility service that provides water to Gauley Bridge, has been able to restore service to the main part of town. But Taylor, 11 families and the four businesses that are separated from the rest of town by the Gauley River still don’t have running water two weeks after the floods.
Kanawha Falls PSD is one of more than 20 water utility services throughout the state affected by the severe flooding that swept through southern West Virginia two weeks ago.
Many of them are public service districts, already cash-strapped from a shrinking customer base from the decline in the coal industry.
“The infrastructure that was put in place, and the loans that were taken out to put in the infrastructure, don’t go away because the customer base is decreasing,” said Amy Swann, executive director of the West Virginia Rural Water Association.
Queen Shoals Public Service District, in Clay County, was already in debt to West Virginia American Water when flood waters devastated the PSD’s infrastructure.
Queen Shoals asked for help from the West Virginia Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network (WV WARN), a program that pools utility company resources during times of need. West Virginia American Water came through, helping the PSD get water to its customers again.
“We provided assistance because they couldn’t, and we feel like it’s the right thing to do,” said Laura Jordan, spokeswoman for West Virginia American Water.
West Virginia American Water has been trying to purchase the Queen Shoals PSD but has been delayed because Queen Shoals hasn’t turned in mandatory reports for years.
Having several water providers in the state has been an asset as towns try to restore water in the hardest-hit areas. Putnam Public Service District provided help to Clay and Roane County. Apart from the WV WARN program, the clean water where Taylor is filling her jugs is the end of a water line for a public water provider in Fayette County.
Utility services left repairing infrastructure still have to figure out a way to pay the bill, especially since many of the fixes are only temporary.
FEMA’s public assistance program can help, but it’s a reimbursement program that only covers 75 percent of the cost.
That could mean rate increases for customers in the future.
“The bills still come,” Swann said. “I think for the areas that were hit, some of them were communities that were already struggling.”
Kanawha Falls PSD had just passed a rate increase, and the warning telling customers their rates went up was on the bill they received while they didn’t have water.
“It was a slap in the face,” said Mark Sosnowski, who helps run the New River Campground.
The manager of Kanawha Falls PSD could not be reached for comment.
The campground had 52 sites booked for the Fourth of July weekend, and all but six of the reservations were canceled.
Kanawha Falls PSD has been working to restore water to the area. They installed a temporary pipe that snaked its way across the train bridge over the Gauley River, only to have their attempts to connect it to the water lines on the other side fail.
The first time the PSD tried to connect the lines, Sosnowski was told the water would come back on that night. So he, his wife and New River Campground owner Cheryl Getz stood outside watching the water spigots at the campground and waiting.
By midnight, when the water wasn’t back, they took shifts watching the lines.
They still didn’t have water by the next Friday and were filling up gallon jugs from the water buffalo in the Family Dollar parking lot.
“I can tell you what I don’t want to see again,” Sosnowski said, “is water jugs.”
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.
———
©2016 The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, W.Va.)
Visit The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, W.Va.) at www.wvgazette.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
