Martin County is right to joyfully welcome the $4.8 million in federal funding announced last week to modernize the long-troubled wastewater treatment plant in Inez. After years of breakdowns, foul odors and limited capacity, the project represents real progress for public health and quality of life.

Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty is correct to call it “a great help on the sewage side.”

Residents near the plant and families whose children play ball next door have endured the consequences of the failing facility for far too long.

Modernizing that plant is necessary, overdue and worthy of appreciation.

But it is not even half the problem.

While Washington has acted on wastewater, all eyes are on Frankfort on drinking water.

Martin County’s water system is more consequential to daily life than the Inez sewer plant. It is the system that has generated years of boil advisories, emergency repairs, regulatory scrutiny and public distrust.

And it is the system that still has no funding.

The county has submitted 12 applications under the state’s WWATERS program, totaling nearly $40 million. The Kentucky Infrastructure Authority’s own rankings place those projects ahead of all but one proposal statewide. State law directs that WWATERS funds be allocated based on those scores.

So we wait.

Last year the county received no funding under this program designed to help the poorest, most distressed systems, because of scoring errors/omissions that lowered the county’s ranking. That mistake, which lies between the local grant writer, state administrators and lawmakers, got acknowledgement after the money went out. However, the “state” offered no correction or retroactive funding.

The result is that one of Kentucky’s most distressed water systems, serving one of its poorest counties, was left behind because of a bureaucratic error and legislative inaction.

Federal sewer funding should not become a substitute for state responsibility.

The General Assembly created the WWATERS program specifically to address communities like Martin County. If the scoring system identifies this county as one of the highest-need areas in Kentucky, lawmakers must abide strictly by their own law.

Martin County has waited long enough.