Vol. 2 No. 1 Specials

A clay-spattered, blue pick-up truck lumbers up the mountainside through the Appalachian summer shadows, grinding along the dirt and gravel roads of Copperhead Hollow, Virginia, to deliver its cargo: two gigantic plastic barrels of water. Houses in Copperhead, like 46,000 others across the state of Virginia, have no running water. Across the country, 25.8 million American households lack access to central sewage, and 15.2 million American households rely on small wells for water. But according to the 2000 census, a full 9.9 million of these wells do not provide safe drinking water.

Most Americans without running water live in remote areas, like Copperhead Hollow in Buchanan Country (pronounced “Copperhead Holler, Buck-A-nen County.” A hollow is a small depression in the side of a mountain.) Copperhead gets its name from its eponymous snake, whose prevalence, residents are quick to warn, has survived man's expansion on the lower flanks of the mountain. About half-way up the hollow, the truck passes a group of hardhatted men and women with reflective, orange sashes thrown over muddy clothes, each carrying PVC and digging in a large trench along the side of the road. Their ages range from 25 to 74. A few children and dogs run about the edges, shouting encouragement, sometimes slipping into the ditch, dismaying the diggers. This crew is laying pipe straight up the side of a mountain, pipe that will soon provide running water for the first time on this mountain.

Historically, rural Virginians have dealt with water the old fashioned way: with wells to obtain their drinking water and outhouses for sewage. In the past few decades, septic systems have become popular. Recently though, the water in wells has began to spoil. In 1999, a Virginia commission found that 17,000 households in Southwest Virginia did not have safe drinking water because of nonfunctioning or contaminated wells. Aging septic tanks and outhouse sites have leached and ruined a few of them, but most local residents blame the extensive coal mining under their mountain for changing the underground flow of water, causing wells to dry up and dangerous elements like sulfur to be released into the groundwater. Whatever the truth, residents and mine workers both know that a full survey to determine the cause of the spoilage would be far too expensive. Since their wells have failed, residents have had to tote water to their homes on the flats of pick-up trucks.

Virginia can’t connect the residents of Copperhead to the central water grid because getting water to run up the side of a mountain for so few households simply costs too much. Since the state has been unwilling to spend the money to provide all its citizens with this basic service, it sought a cheaper solution: volunteer labor. In 1997, Virginia opened the Self-Help Virginia Water Project, a collaborative venture between the state and its citizens that provides running water to Virginians living in remote areas. Like the well-known, non-profit group Habitat for Humanity, Self-Help Virginia combines institutional resources with volunteer labor. The savings are dramatic: the Self-Help project provides water and wastewater systems for less than half the cost of an ordinary installation. Unlike Habitat, Self-Help’s funding comes entirely from state financing, mostly provided by the Appalachian Regional Commission and by Community Development Block Grants.

The project uses two very simple principles: sharing and cooperation. State and local agencies share their materials, like backhoes, trenchers, and piping, with the local communities. They also provide one or two trained waterworks employees to supervise the project and provide small training workshops for the volunteers. The community shares its time and its labor, asking volunteers to show up for work whenever they have a free day. It also shares regular dinners (the local word for lunch) of good Appalachian fare: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and peach cobbler. Local restaurateurs and housewives donate the food and do the cooking. State agencies cooperate with local governments to provide supplies and to relax the regulations and inspections that usually slow down a water works project.