In West Virginia we wear all black, not to mourn loved ones, but for lack of safe water
For years, West Virginians have been fighting to keep their water safe from dangerous chemicals, yet each day, countless working-class people across the state still have no access to clean water for drinking, cooking, laundry and other essential functions in the modern world.
The West Virginia Can’t Wait movement, which has become an organizing platform for progressive grassroots movements across the state, including the candidacy of gubernatorial hopeful and former anti-poverty community organizer, Stephen Smith, has gained significant momentum since the beginning of the year, and yesterday (Tuesday, May 14, 2019) launched a movement to encourage West Virginians to demand clean water and other basic necessities they deserve by posting pictures of their tap water on social media and tagging their local representatives.
West Virginians Can’t Wait for Safe Water rallied in Preston County to share horror stories of what life is like in a small rural town which has been decimated and abandoned by corrupt politicians eager to sell their souls to corporations and big money donors.
“This is disgusting,” candidate for governor, Stephen Smith, said. “This is a crisis when we live in the richest country in the history of the world and the richest moment in West Virginia history.”
It is inexcusable for West Virginian children, family and schools to not have access to basic necessities like safe drinking water, Smith said. In the West Virginia legislature this year, he said, a group of lobbyists convinced a group of politicians to reject updated water protections which were 20 years in-the-making.
“They claim we don’t deserve anything better than this because we’re poor and because we’re overweight,” Smith said. “They say if we demand something basic for our families, these companies will just leave. That’s a lie.”
Smith encouraged West Virginians to become more politically active and civically engaged in order to vote in representatives who actually stand up for and fight for their values.
“This is the kind of government we get when the industries are in charge instead of the people,” Smith said. “We can’t just keep going to the capitol and demand they listen to us; we have to go to the capitol and replace them with us.”
In West Virginia, Smith said, the classic dynamics of left versus right are mostly a distraction from the real issues impacting everyday people.
“Here, it isn’t democrat versus republican, it’s the Good Ol’ Boys versus everybody else,” he said. “And until we have a government that belongs to us, they’re going to keep us fighting over scraps.”
Smith said it is backwards that those fighting for basic necessities like clean drinking water, safe roads and infrastructure and good schools are often labelled as radicals while those with extremist positions are rarely criticized similarly.
“It’s not extreme to want environmentalists and citizens running your department of environmental protections instead of industry (running it). It’s not extreme to demand that every child in WV have safe drinking water regardless of who their parents are or where they live. We think the extremists are those who think this is normal,” Smith said.
Smith ended his speech by encouraging local officials and politicians responsible for the issues and who claim West Virginians cannot demand better to go out and drink the water for themselves.
“Until we get to the day when the people most impacted by problems are the ones solving those problems, we’re going to keep having these fights over and over and over again,” Smith said.
“The struggle in this community runs deep,” Candi Sisler, teacher and president of Preston County Education Association, said. “Ever since I can remember, there have been problems with providing safe water to everyone.”
Sisler continued to detail a situation she remembered from her teenage years in which a flood destroyed a main water line, forcing an entire local community which lived “across the river” to get by without any running water for an entire month. Additionally, she said, kids in Preston County schools still today are often afraid to drink their water because they sometimes find it to be tinted orange and are unsure why.
Sisler said in her Preston County community, Whetsell Settlement, citizens do not have access to public water, and all the houses have wells for water access.
“This is our water on a normal basis; not abnormal at all,” Sisler said, holding up a large bottle of muddy-looking tap water she had brought along as evidence. “We could purchase an extra filtration system which would help for $10,000, but who has $10,000 laying around?” she asked.
Weekly, Sisler and those in her community must travel to other towns to transport water and to do their laundry because their water is unusable, she said.
“Or we just wear black all the time,” Sisler said. “The water turns my clothes orange (in the wash).”
Another local school administrator in Preston County, Justin Hough, said the dangerous and toxic water quality in West Virginia causes him to fear for his family’s safety.
“I’m a father and a husband,” Hough, also a member of the National Guard, said. “When I see the quality of water currently in our state and I think about my family, it’s very difficult for me to stay here.”
West Virginia’s water quality issues are mostly a result of corporations and industries corrupting local politics so much so that they “dictate our way of life,” Hough said. “And water is our way of life.”
Hough also noted the struggle for clean and safe water is anything but a new issue for West Virginians. The problem he said, goes at least as far back as 2014, when nine counties were put under a federal state of emergency by President Barack Obama due to the spillage of 7,500 gallons of toxic coal-cleaning chemicals into the Elk River, a tributary of the Kanawha River in West Virginia’s capital city, Charleston.
The spill — which resulted in roughly 300,000 residents being unable to ingest, cook, bathe, wash or boil their water — closed local businesses for days and schools for over a week with most locals still unconvinced of the water’s safety and was the third of its kind in just a five-year span at the time. Just one day after the spill, it was reported that roughly 700 residents had reported symptoms to West Virginia’s poison control center, with several being hospitalized and countless other cases left unreported.
Interestingly, I (the writer of this story) happened to be a student at Sissonville High School in Kanawha County during the 2014 spill, and I distinctly remember being stunned at what was happening. Luckily, my sister was living in Morgantown at the time where she was a student at West Virginia University, so I was fortunate to have a place to stay with her until the water was fixed. Countless other noble, hard-working people, including many of my closest friends and family and even my parents for a period of time, had no place to turn to and were forced to stay home with no source of water except the toxic and poisoned licorice-smelling substance which they had been instructed not to use pouring from their sinks.
All this in the richest country in the history of the world, during the wealthiest time in West Virginia’s deep history rooted in the struggles and resulting fights of abandoned, passionate working people.
“Red or blue, wherever you fall on the political spectrum, we all need water,” Hough said, continuing to highlight the necessity for rebuilding the state’s crumbling infrastructure in all aspects and taking whatever actions necessary to protect rivers and streams.
“West Virginia won’t continue to be “Wild and Wonderful” and beautiful as long as we continue to have water like what Candi just displayed,” Hough said.
Douglas Harding can be contacted at harding26@marshall.edu.
