Thousands of residents in Southern West Virginia live without the luxury of public
water lines running to their homes. Instead, these people may rely on well
water, which is unregulated and can have compromised quality and supply.
This project is expected to
bring a reliable water source to more than 12,000 people in Southern West Virginia. Elected officials are
confident this dream will be a reality with stimulus money.
"Can you imagine being
without running water in your home?
This is a whole new ballgame for these people," Sam Muscari, Sr.
with the Wyoming County Commission said.
The plan is to build a
plant and pipe water from R.D. Bailey Lake to thousands of homes in the
region.
"The infrastructure would be simply an unbelievable situation," Muscari said. "Now we have nothing but
wells, cisterns or impoundments with the water being so unstable with no good
reliable source other than R.D. Bailey Lake in that area."
"It would be a
great situation. We could open this land for people to move into to build their
homes which we don’t have now."
State Senator Richard
Browning of the 9th District is hoping to move quickly before the stimulus cash
runs out.
"We've still got a
mountain of work to do," he said.
"The engineers and
consultants, the accountants and lawyers have to get this stuff done in a
month because the supply of money, although there is $4 billion still
available, is going fast."
Browning says this project
is part of the work to bring basic infrastructure to the region, along with
high-speed broadband connectivity, and a four-lane highway, the Coalfields Expressway.
"All those things are
very important if we are going to ever get on an equal or level playing field
with the rest of the state and nation," he said. "We have been
neglected."
"We have a team of
people here who are committed to working to improve the quality of life in this
part of the state and it is a necessary ingredient if we are ever going to
diversify our economy, to have those forms of infrastructure."
The project is expected to
cost $135 million. Muscari and Browning hope the federal government will cover
most of the cost with stimulus money while the rest is expected to come from
abandoned mine land and USDA funding.
They say the project would take two to
three years to complete once funding is secured.