Why Some Americans Stopped Drinking Their Tap Water

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This article was produced by the Guardian US and co-published by Consumer Reports as part of our collective ongoing investigation into America’s Water Crisis.

Florene Reed always makes sure there’s enough bottled water for her teenage grandson, even if that means making do herself with tap water that causes a burning sensation in her stomach.

Reed, 63, grew up drinking the crystalline water from wells and local springs dotted throughout the Appalachian Mountains in Martin County, but she switched to bottled while raising her own family amid safety fears linked to coal mining and mismanagement at the utility.

She’s not alone: Ninety-six percent of residents rely primarily on bottled water for drinking, and only 56 percent use tap water for cooking, according to a recent study by the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

The tap water smells strongly of chlorine, like a swimming pool, and residents frequently report problems with bad taste, discoloration, sediment, and irritated or burning skin after bathing.

“In Martin County nobody drinks the tap water unless they have to,” says Reed, a former teacher’s assistant who lives on $780 a month in benefits. “You can’t trust it, and you can’t trust the water department.”

Reed ostensibly pays two water bills: $60 to $70 per month to the public utility and $30 or so to the store for bottled water. Her grandson Chance Crum, 18, has never tasted the tap water.

“It makes you sick to my stomach,” Reed says. “I would never let my baby drink it. It smells bad and it tastes bad. It’s nasty, but sometimes I have no choice.”

This deep mistrust, residents and advocates say, is a legacy of how the water infrastructure has been neglected and mismanaged for years.

‘Paying for Water They Can’t Even Drink’

Martin County, in southeastern rural Kentucky, is one of the poorest counties in the U.S., with almost 40 percent of its estimated 12,000 mostly white residents living in poverty, and high rates of opioid addiction.

It was once the heart of America’s booming coal industry, but all that’s left now are a handful of mines, property empires belonging to former coal barons, and the meandering freight train that mostly transports consumer goods.

The county’s water problems first came into sharp focus—and were exacerbated—in October 2000 when a local coal company spilled 300 million gallons of coal slurry containing high concentrations of arsenic and mercury into nearby waterways.

At the time, it was the worst environmental catastrophe in the southeastern U.S., but the Bush administration, under the leadership of then-Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (wife of longstanding Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.), was accused of whitewashing the federal investigation (PDF) by advocates and experts.

In the wake of the disaster, regulators found the water system in disarray and recommended root and branch reforms to fix the broken infrastructure and management system.

Yet over the next two decades, the utility failed to invest in crucial water infrastructure while doubling its service network in an ad hoc manner—largely to households whose private wells were contaminated by coal mining.

The result: A network of hodgepodge pipes and pumps caused frequent line breaks and outages, forcing schools to be suspended and residents to boil water for safety. Line breaks risk contaminants including harmful bacteria entering the system, and residents regularly report brown, earthy water.

Rural water systems face unusual challenges (PDF) in providing drinking water that’s clean, safe, affordable, and sustainable, including difficult terrain and a lack of financial stability and expertise. About 97 percent of the country’s 153,000 public drinking water systems serve 10,000 people or less.

But Martin County’s water crisis is just one consequence of a deep-seated local economic and political power (PDF) system mired in small-town mismanagement that includes alleged patronage, self-dealing, and corruption that advocates say has obstructed investment in crucial water infrastructure.

Residents are angry that local officials have authorized construction of an ostentatious government building in the county seat, Inez, costing $50,000 a month in repayments until 2038. While currently paid using coal severance funds, the burden may soon fall on local taxpayers because Kentucky’s coal industry is rapidly declining.

Meanwhile, the algae-ridden reservoir is littered with empty liquor bottles and used syringes, and only one of the three water clarifying tanks is fully functional—though a grant has now been secured to fix this. The surrounding landscape is blighted by boarded-up stores, run-down trailer parks, and signs advertising drug treatment centers.

Water Warriors

In 2016, a grassroots group called Martin County Water Warriors was created after the Flint, Mich., water scandal made headlines, and community members began sharing photos and stories about leaks, contamination, and outages. A second group, Martin County Concerned Citizens, persuaded the state regulator (the Kentucky Public Service Commission, or PCS) to give ordinary citizens a role in holding the water department accountable.

The entire water board resigned in protest over the increased oversight at the end of 2017, leaving the utility saddled with $1.1 million in debt.

In early 2018, the new board inherited a system on the brink of collapse: The utility was losing $100,000 a month, and it sought to increase rates by 49.5 percent. The following day, half the county lost its water supply, leaving some folks without water for three weeks.

In the end, the PCS approved a 42 percent hike, leaving one of Kentucky’s poorest counties with the fifth-most-expensive water rates in the state.

“The water district has always been part of the corrupt old boys’ system, where certain people and businesses got away with stuff without paying their fair share, while the majority were left paying for water they can’t even drink,” says Nina McCoy, a retired biology teacher-turned-water advocate from Concerned Citizens.

“People are still worried about the safety of the water, and that’s legitimate, but the biggest problem is affordability,” McCoy adds.

Nationwide, millions of ordinary Americans are facing rising and unaffordable bills for running water, and risk being disconnected or losing their homes if they cannot pay, a landmark Guardian investigation found.

And bills look set to become even less affordable.

On Jan. 1, 2020, Alliance Water Resources, a private company that also runs rural utilities in Tennessee, Missouri, and Iowa, took over day-to-day operations of Martin County’s beleaguered water department in a contract worth $160,000 a month.

Almost everything—the pipes, treatment plant, polluted reservoir, and billing system—needs overhauling after decades of neglect. Federal funding for water systems has declined by 77 percent since 1977.

“It’s a constant battle, like putting out fires, but now we are fixing things and have a systematic plan to maintenance as opposed to a Band-Aid approach,” says Craig Miller, Alliance Water’s division manager.

Repairs and reconnections are happening faster, but the dilapidated system continues to hemorrhage water and cash.

In June, 71 percent of treated water was leaked before it reached a tap, and the utility lost almost $50,000, according to figures Alliance presented at July’s public board meeting. The current debt stands at about $750,000.

A new billing system has already resulted in substantially higher charges for some residents, including bills higher than $300 in July. A universal price hike is almost certain next year.

“Water is a human right, but clean water is not,” Miller says. “It costs money. Someone has to pay for it. The fact is revenues are not covering costs. Disconnecting people is an effective deterrent, absolutely.”

Miller claims water theft is “rampant” in the community. As a result, anyone caught siphoning water twice now faces disconnection and a lifetime ban—an extraordinarily punitive deterrent condemned by advocates.

“We’re very concerned about a rate hike before improvements in quality and leaks are seen, and when affordability is already a major issue,” says Mary Cromer, attorney at Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center and co-author of a 2019 report on the affordability crisis (PDF).

According to a study, private water companies charge, on average, 59 percent more than public utilities.

Contaminants

Overall, grassroots activism has forced greater transparency and accountability from the utility, but most people still do not trust the water.

To address this, the University of Kentucky’s Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences designed a citizen-science study (PDF) in which trained community members obtained tap water samples from 97 households throughout 2019.

The results were alarming: Almost half the samples had at least one contaminant that violated at least one Environmental Protection Agency standard. The main health concern was unsafe levels of disinfection byproducts (DBPs)—specifically, total trihaloacetic acids and total trihalomethanes—which are associated with certain cancers and birth defects.

DBPs are formed by the reaction between chlorine added during the treatment process—which is necessary to kill harmful bacteria—and organic material found in raw water and inadequately flushed pipes.

But the EPA has reported zero DBP violations in Martin County since 2018. That’s when the agency, which bases its calculation on the annual average of concentrations from quarterly samples, halved its collection sites to just two.

In addition, coliform bacteria was detected in 13 percent of the samples, indicating the possible presence of harmful bacteria.

While the study did not analyze every possible contaminant, toxic metals linked to coal waste were not present in high quantities.

Steps can be taken to reduce DBPs, yet even before the results were published, Miller, of Alliance Water, and Jimmy Kerr, president of the water board, had dismissed the findings—claiming an insider had blown the whistle on sample collection irregularities.

“Water quality hasn’t been an issue for two years, but there’s inaccurate data and people out there who have an agenda,” Miller says. “This is about perception and education.”

Not so, says lead researcher Jason Unrine: “We followed all EPA protocols, and the samples were analyzed in state-accredited labs.”

Kerr, who claims his children drink the tap water, says the study distracted from the progress being made. “It’s frustrating that the advocates are trying to pull us back in the wrong direction,” he says. “It’s a completely different district now; the data is old. But a few people think they are the next Erin Brockovich … The easiest thing is fixing pipes, the hardest will be getting people’s trust back.”

BarbiAnn Maynard, an outspoken activist with Water Warriors who drinks and cooks with spring water, says: “The board call me a ‘lovable pain in the ass,’ but that’s fine, we’re forcing them to do their jobs. Just because Martin County is poor, isolated, and rural, doesn’t mean we’re not important, we deserve affordable clean water, too.”

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America’s Water Crisis

Consumer Reports has a long history of investigating America’s water. In 1974, we published a landmark three-part series (PDF) revealing that water purification systems in many communities had not kept pace with increasing levels of pollution and that many community water supplies might be contaminated. Our work helped lead to Congress enacting the Safe Drinking Water Act in December 1974.

More than 45 years later, America is still struggling with a dangerous divide between those who have access to safe and affordable drinking water and those who don’t. Communities of color often are affected disproportionately by this inequity. Consumer Reports remains committed to exposing the weaknesses in our country’s water system, including raising questions about Americans’ reliance on bottled water as an alternative—and the safety and sustainability implications of this dependence.

In addition to our ongoing investigations into bottled water, we are proud to be partnering with our readers and those of the Guardian US, another institution dedicated to journalism in the public interest, to test for dangerous contaminants in tap water samples from more than 100 communities around the country. The Guardian and CR will also be publishing related content from Ensia, a nonprofit newsroom focused on environmental issues and solutions.

America’s Water Crisis is the name we are jointly giving to this project and the series of articles we co-publish on the major challenges many in the U.S. face getting access to safe, clean, and affordable water. We will share the results of our upcoming test findings with you. In the meantime, you can join our social media conversation around water under the hashtag #waterincrisis.

Gwendolyn Bounds
Chief Content Officer, Consumer Reports