Water Crisis in WV Coalfields
Things don't have to be this way. Please wake up. Don't wait 'til it comes to your yard.
From the West Virginia Conference of The United Methodist Church:
Rev. Jeff Allen recalls with sadness a story shared with him by a bus driver making deliveries to McDowell County school children at the height of the pandemic.
The West Virginia Council of Churches, in partnership with other organizations around the state and region, initiated a program called “Camp in a Box,” where students unable to attend school because of the COVID shutdown received packages dropped off at their homes containing food, along with learning materials for at-home projects.
“One of the reports we got back is that kids didn’t wait to get in the house [upon delivery],” Rev. Allen recalls. “They ripped open boxes in their yards and began eating the food right there.”
Such anecdotes underscore that around 40 percent of McDowell County’s children do not receive enough food to eat on a daily basis, in a place where a third of the population lives below the poverty line.
Throw in the fact that numerous communities throughout the county do not have access to safe, clean drinking water, and you have a situation where the most vulnerable suffer from a severe lack of life’s basic necessities.
Among those impacted by this public health crisis are three of the five communities served by the churches of the Welch Charge. Approximately 700 households in Anawalt, Gary, and Leckie are affected, with residents forced to deal with frequent service disruptions, discoloration, sedimentation, and contamination due to collapsing infrastructure and other factors. An already-approved project that would solve these issues for the people of Anawalt and the surrounding area still awaits the necessary $6.1 million needed to fund it.
“It’s tough on folks,” Rev. Brad Davis, pastor of the Welch Charge, recently told a reporter. “Give these people some money so that they can have clean water.”
Clean water issues aren’t confined to those three specific communities. There are others in McDowell suffering from similar problems. Nor are they confined to that specific county. Just next door, residents of the Wyoming County community of Indian Creek have been dealing with massive contamination issues for nearly two years in what some are beginning to label an environmental emergency.
A third of Wyoming County’s children live below the poverty line, with one in four considered to be food insecure.
“As United Methodists we believe that water is a gift from God, and because of that all people have a fundamental right to clean water,” says Rev. Davis. “The fact the longtime marginalized and exploited people of the southern coalfields are being denied this right fervently speaks to the structural and systemic sinfulness of our society. In a place abundantly rich in natural resources, our people are kept poor and wanting. This is an injustice the church is called to prophetically address.”
The Welch Charge, in collaboration with From Below: Rising Together with Coalfield Justice, and many other organizations, groups, and individuals, have been supplying bottled water since last March. Many local churches throughout the West Virginia Annual Conference, as well as United Women of Faith, and the Conference itself have donated both water and funds to help with this endeavor through the Hope For McDowell Fund administered by Hope in the Mountains, a nonprofit faith-based ministry located in Sophia (hopeinthemountains.com).
Recently, a 500-gallon portable water buffalo was delivered to McDowell County to assist with the ongoing work, courtesy of a grant from UMCOR’s WASH Program awarded to WVUMC Disaster Response Ministries.
But those on the ground recognize that such efforts, while very much needed, are far from the solution. Passing out bottled water or filling up a gallon jug is a band-aid on a gaping wound, not the balm needed to heal it. With the WVAC Justice & Advocacy Team dubbing 2025 as the Year of the Child, the hope is that churches from around the conference will extend their support beyond just the pocketbook to include advocacy and action.
The hope is that a unified front by the people called United Methodists in West Virginia and Garrett County, MD will call on the state to bring justice to the southern coalfields and her children.
“Clean water is a necessity for life,” says Martha Hill, chair of the Justice & Advocacy Team and member of downtown Charleston’s St. Mark’s UMC. “We have the obligation as Christians to ensure that all God’s creation has clean water to survive and thrive.”
Particularly the most vulnerable among us – our children.
