Series: An Appalachian water district remains desperate for help
Updated: Sep 19
Rural Martin County, Kentucky, remains one of the most underfunded water systems in America, contaminated by a devastated coal slurry spill more than 25 years ago. I used this short series to shine light on efforts underway in the community to clear up the community's water and reputation.
Could KY's 'poster child for water woes' finally get state money for improvements?
Improvements to an Eastern Kentucky water and sewer district notorious for high costs, filthy tap water and aging infrastructure top a legislative list for possible funding in 2026, and some local leaders believe it is their last best chance to turn the page on decades of infamy as the commonwealth’s worst utility.
What comes next for Martin County’s water and sewer system is matter of a newly simmering controversy.
About a dozen projects to rehab water and sanitation infrastructure at a cost of $39.7 million are among the top 20 scorers of more than 150 eligible applications the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority recommended last week for funding by the General Assembly.
Legislators will use KIA rankings to invest in projects from a pot of money they carved out of the budget in 2024 to bail out the most underfunded and deteriorating water and sewer systems. Despite allocating $75 million each for fiscal years 2025 and 2026, only $53.4 million remains after lawmakers released their first round of funding last year and the KIA awarded a handful of emergency grants.
Martin County, well known for its habitually poor water quality and high costs, was notably absent from last year’s $87.3 million appropriation, a fact local leaders have chalked up to bad application management on the part of the area development district and KIA scoring they say missed the mark.
Now, however, officials believe they finally have a shot at making meaningful, wholesale improvements to the system.
“I just can’t emphasize how important this is,” Martin County Judge-Executive Lon Lafferty said. “We all know that Martin County, Kentucky, has been the poster child for water woes for so long, and it holds us back in so many ways. It’s so critical for economic development and our ability to stand on our own that we meet this basic necessity.”
Not everyone is convinced local leadership is prepared to manage the county’s water system alone, however. And funding members of the county water and sewer board believe they will finally secure in 2026 remains the fragile truce holding back a disagreement over what comes next for the system’s management.
Board seeks local control again
Motivated by systemwide improvements and the favorable rankings Martin County projects received in KIA’s funding recommendations this month, the county’s water and sanitation district board filed a Kentucky Public Service Commission motion Dec. 3 requesting an end to state oversight and third-party system management.
After years of shoddy management, the PSC ordered the board to seek outside management in 2018. The board landed on Missouri-based Alliance Water Resources, a for-profit municipal water firm that has overseen gradual improvements to the county’s network of leaky, aging water pipes and pumps.
A little over a year ago, Martin County regularly lost more than 70% of its treated potable water to network leaks. Now, with the help of Alliance, the board is reporting roughly 40% losses. Alliance has helped replace more than 90% of the county’s customer meters with the help of state funding.
Seven years later and Laffery said he believes the county is ready to manage the system without the assistance of a for-profit venture. No one will care as deeply and perform services as cost-efficiently as Martin County residents and workers, he said.
“We have met the tenets of that [PSC] order, and we feel that we now have in place the necessary board and structure to begin to take back our system,” he said.
Not everyone agrees, however. Nina McCoy, secretary of the Martin County Water and Sewer Districts board and chair of a grassroots organizing committee advocating for improved water resources, voted in favor of the county’s petition to end PSC oversight.
Now she said she believes that was a mistake. Wednesday, she sent the PSC a letter publicly revoking her vote, citing the county’s intention to end its contract with Alliance Resources.
“I don’t support losing Alliance Water Resources right now,” McCoy said. “We are improving, but we are nowhere near the ability to make sure that we are able to hire and maintain the type of workers and equipment that Alliance is able to give us. We’re asking the state for more help right now. We’re not ready to do this alone.”
In July, Martin County’s Mountain Citizen quoted Lafferty blaming the county’s lack of attention from lawmakers in the last General Assembly grant cycle partly on Alliance Resources. He said ongoing issues with brown, discolored water are the company’s responsibility. Meanwhile, the fiscal court and water and sanitation board have little say over day-to-day Alliance operations because of the standing PSC order.
Board casts blame for latest mistakes
Lafferty told the Herald-Leader Wednesday it is not his intention to immediately end the Alliance contract, but he said the county is close.
Tim Thoma, a municipal water and sewer design expert Lafferty appointed as chair of the county’s board last year, has delivered the shot of adrenaline the water system needed, the judge-executive said.
In a year’s time, Thoma has rewritten the system’s infrastructure maintenance plan and begun allocating resources to the water network’s most pressing needs, Lafferty added.
That is not enough to make up for the resources Alliance has brought to the table, McCoy contends. She said she fears the judge-executive and his board chair are going to “steamroll” Alliance out of the county, losing vital access to its technology, training, employee benefits and more.
Earlier this year, Thoma directed the board to sue the Big Sandy Area Development District for its management and administration of a raw-water intake system rehab project. The board is seeking more than $1 million in damages it says it has incurred due to the costs of renting a diesel generator to pump water from a nearby river to a pre-treatment reservoir.
More than three years after construction of the improved water-intake project began, it is still incomplete. Meanwhile, Big Sandy handled the water district’s request for grant funding last year, and Thoma said he believes it was that organization’s mismanagement that led to Martin County being shunned.
“Big Sandy ADD is running projects that they have no business running,” Thoma told the Herald-Leader.
The area development district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
EKY county’s drinking water struggle dates back decades. It’s not alone
An Eastern Kentucky county with a long history of having one of Kentucky’s worst municipal water systems could get an influx of state grant money if it can demonstrate a greater need to improve aging and failing infrastructure than other rural mountain communities.
Martin County, often known as a “poster child” for expensive, poor-quality water ranks among the top 20 projects the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority has recommended for the legislature to fund in 2026.
Only $53.4 million remains available, and Martin County alone is seeking nearly $40 million, but county leaders believe if even a fraction of requested projects get funded, it could go a long way in addressing deep-rooted problems that have festered in the system.
“If you just fix this line or repair this pump, it never gives you the potential to really adequately attack the problem,” said Martin County Judge-Executive Lon Lafferty, who is also an Inez physician. “I look at it like I look at the body. You have to take a holistic approach.”
Martin County has more water and sewer projects on the list for recommended funding under the Kentucky Water and Wastewater Assistance for Troubled or Economically Restrained Systems program than any other utility in the state, securing the No. 2 to No. 7 spots and No. 16 to No. 20 top scores according to need and adjusted by median household income.
But Eastern Kentucky is disproportionately represented among the state’s most disadvantaged sewer and water systems, making up the lion’s share of requested funds.
Projects like a nearly $1 million new water treatment plant in Evarts and nearly $8.5 million for line replacements, debt service and infrastructure rehab in Floyd County could downgrade Martin County’s rankings.
Eastern Kentucky water infrastructure needs
Natural disasters and lax local management have left water infrastructure near the breaking point for many of the state’s easternmost municipalities, meaning advocates will have to make a case for why Martin County’s needs are greater than a whole host of other legislative pet projects.
“The recommendations really show how much greater the need is than the money that is available,” said Mary Cromer, deputy director of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center. “In Eastern Kentucky especially, we have persistent poverty and a trajectory of decline of the coal industry over the last decade or two. That hurts local utilities.”
The decline in coal corresponds with fewer residents to pay into a system that faces increased costs for maintenance and regular service because of the unique geography Eastern Kentuckians call home, she added.
But Martin County’s longtime association with bad water is expected to hold credibility in Frankfort next year.
The county first earned what Lafferty called its “dubious honor” among the worst and costliest water systems in America just over 25 years ago when a coal slurry spill contaminated the area’s surface-water supply with cancer-causing disinfection byproducts and bacteria.
That disaster set off a public-health crisis in the community that has led to widespread and persistent distrust in the county’s drinking water supply and the people who manage it. Despite promises from federal agencies and researchers that their water is safe to drink, nearly 9 in 10 Martin County residents still use bottled water to drink, bathe and brush their teeth, according to a 2020 University of Kentucky study.
More recent problems, documented in social media posts depicting brown, acrid-smelling water in bathtubs and washing machines, are caused by an outdated, aging network of pipes and pumps delivering water to customers’ homes, McCoy said.
Leaks in the system allow dirt and mud to back up into the network, causing discolored water and settling. But it has proved nearly impossible to convince residents their dirty water is not the latest proof of rebounding coal runoff pollution.
“We have been able to improve with the help of our water management company to the point where we are not at the very brink of a crisis constantly,” McCoy said, “but we need every penny we can possibly get to hold this thing together.”
Only about eight of the county’s dozen or so funding requests are expected to be under real consideration, which the board has emphasized would be enough to make the major improvements necessary for full local control. But the KIA has ranked projects it recommends the General Assembly in a number of different ways, including by median household income, which could put Martin County at a disadvantage.
KIA used 2023 DATA USA figures, which put Martin County’s median household income at $45,837, despite U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty estimates that put the county nearly $10,000 lower and as the second most impoverished county in Kentucky.
The KIA did not respond to a list of Herald-Leader emailed questions.
Nearly half of newly authorized state grant money to help improve rural water systems in the commonwealth is headed to an Eastern Kentucky county notorious for some of Appalachia’s poorest quality drinking water.
Martin County is slated to receive $26 million from a $52 million General Assembly allocation approved late last week. Gov. Andy Beshear signed the legislation Monday.
“This legislation is important because it will help deliver clean, safe water and modern infrastructure to Kentuckians in rural communities, including Martin County, which has faced challenges for far too long,” Beshear said in a statement.
The county, well-known for high costs, filthy tap water and aging infrastructure, was notably absent from last year’s $87.3 million appropriation, a fact local leaders chalked up to bad application management on the part of the area development district and state agency scoring they say missed the mark.
Meanwhile, the Kentucky Public Service Commission denied the county’s request to end state monitoring earlier this month, prolonging Frankfort’s oversight of a drinking water system plagued by shoddy management and costly leaks.
Situated on the bank of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River along Kentucky’s border with West Virginia, Martin County has long been known as the state’s “poster child” for expensive, poor-quality water. Its “dubious honor,” the county’s judge-executive says, began more than 25 years ago when a coal slurry spill contaminated the surface-water supply with cancer-causing disinfection byproducts and bacteria.
The 2000 spill set off a public health crisis in the community that led to widespread and persistent distrust in the county’s drinking water supply and the people who manage it. Nearly 9 in 10 county residents still use bottled water to drink, bathe and brush their teeth, according to a 2020 University of Kentucky study.
County leaders identified nearly 20 drinking water system rehab projects that need funding under the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority’s Water and Wastewater Assistance for Troubled or Economically Restrained Systems program when lawmakers first compiled their list of priority projects last year.
Eight will receive state money this year to construct water system booster and pump stations, install water lines and pay off debts, plus minor tank repairs and painting. The county sewer district will get a $6.6 million grant to construct a new, countywide lift station, replace gravity lines and pay off debts.
“I’ve had conversations with the Governor in the past, and he’s assured me he is on top of our water plight here in our county,” Martin County Judge-Executive Lon Lafferty said in a statement. “This money will help so many Kentuckians.”
The $52 million the legislature earmarked this year exhausts the pot of money carved out of the budget in 2024 to bail out the most underfunded and deteriorating water and sewer systems in the state, despite two $75 million allocations in fiscal years 2025 and 2026 and a handful of emergency grants.
Beshear signed a bill into law last week toughening the minimum criteria water systems have to meet to receive WWATERS funding. It also excludes projects that expand utility service. The bill took immediate effect and applied to this year’s grant allocation.
Eastern Kentucky and broader central Appalachia have struggled to deliver drinking water to rural mountain residents for decades. Natural disasters repeatedly overwhelm aging systems that have struggled to catch up as county populations slide and fewer customers pay into the system. Lafferty said Martin County residents could be facing yet another water and wastewater rate increase soon.
“In Eastern Kentucky especially, we have persistent poverty and a trajectory of decline of the coal industry over the last decade or two,” Mary Cromer, deputy director of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center told the Herald-Leader. “That hurts local utilities.”
All but $15.2 million of this year’s $52 million WWATERS grant funding are headed to Kentucky’s easternmost counties. The rural Casey County city of Liberty was the primary exception, earning a massive $12 million from the state to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant.
The other two exceptions included a $1.2 million disinfection byproduct mitigation and system improvement project in Smithland in Livingston County, and a new tank and waterline extension in the city of Oak Grove, south of Hopkinsville.
Remaining beneficiaries include less than $1 million for a water treatment plant in the small Harlan County city of Evarts, $8.7 million for two water systems in Floyd County and $1.3 million for debt repayments in the Elkhorn City water system in Pike County.