County fast-tracks weed-cutting

BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

INEZ — Martin County Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty is calling on the Kentucky Public Service Commission to rescind its order requiring outside management of the Martin County Water District. He cited operational failures that have led to widespread brown-colored water and growing public frustration. In the same meeting Tuesday, the Martin County Fiscal Court moved to strengthen the county’s Road and Bridge Department by hiring seasonal workers and purchasing equipment to fast-track weed-cutting along county roads.

Lafferty stated that residents are reporting discolored tap water throughout the county. He said he spent most of the weekend discussing the situation with Water Board Chairman Tim Thoma.

“As most of you all know, Tim is a nationally recognized expert in water and sewage,” Lafferty said. “We’re just as blessed as we could be to have a man of his caliber. He believes he knows what the problem is and it basically comes down to a filtration problem with the chemical manganese. Even though the levels of manganese, iron and everything else are below the levels that the state considers safe, it’s still brown water. And who wants to drink brown water? No one. I don’t.”

Lafferty said residents have every right to be upset. He reiterated the county’s ongoing efforts to secure funding for long-term water system improvements.

“We’re fed up with the situation of the water system in this county,” said the judge. “We’ve worked tirelessly to apply for and receive grant funding for our water system. We took it on the chin in the last round of grant funding. You saw that in the paper. It’s a disgraceful situation when we were due $24 million and because of an accounting error, we lost $24 million.”

He added, “Do you know what we could have done with $24 million? We would be long on our way to getting that $60 million or $70 million that I’ve always railed about to really make a difference.”

The judge made it clear that he does not blame the water board, which he praised as “some of the finest people in the world.” Instead, he pointed to the company currently managing day-to-day operations under a PSC order: the Missouri-headquartered Alliance Water Resources.

“It’s not an administrative problem,” Lafferty said. “It’s an operational problem. It is a day-to-day operational problem that this court has no oversight on and that the water board has no oversight on, because it’s under a Public Service Commission order mandating that we hire outside management. And it’s their responsibility; they’re in charge of the day-to-day operations of Martin County Water. That’s failing; that day-to-day operation is not being done.”

Lafferty criticized Alliance for failing to anticipate and prevent the current issues.

“They should have been thinking forward,” he commented. “That’s what you do in business; that’s what you do in a profession. As a physician, I can’t just sit back and let things happen. No. You have to be prepared. But the company operating this system was not thinking about this situation and was not prepared. So the citizens once again took it on the chin.”

Lafferty concluded by saying the PSC must dissolve the outside management order and return control to local leadership.

“We need to be out from under the PSC so that the fiscal court and our water board can start making the decisions in the best interest of the people of this county,” he said. “It does not need to be done by an outside corporation that obviously cares more about the financial end of things than they do about the quality of the water and the health of our citizens.”

In November 2018, the PSC ordered the Martin County Water District to contract with an outside company to manage the utility. This order followed years of high water loss, insufficient maintenance, poor financial management and growing financial debt. In late 2019, after the district still had not obeyed the PSC’s order, the PSC negotiated Martin County’s contract with Alliance Water Resources Inc. to manage the utility commencing Jan. 1, 2020. That transition to outside management has been accompanied by steep rate increases for customers and increased debt.

Weed-cutting

The fiscal court took steps to strengthen its Road and Bridge Department by fast-tracking the purchase of a road grader, approving the hiring of seasonal workers and investing in new equipment to tackle overgrown weeds and tree canopies along county roads.

Magistrates voted to advertise for an “available grader” in the public notices section of the Mountain Citizen for two consecutive weeks, shifting away from previous plans to order a new machine that would not be available for several months.

“As the court knows, we’ve been deficient in the amount of equipment that we’ve had in the past couple of years,” Judge Lafferty said. “We would like to get the grader going as quickly as possible.”

Proposals must be submitted in a sealed envelope marked “Grader Proposals” and delivered to the judge’s office no later than noon June 23. Submissions can be mailed to Martin County Fiscal Court, P.O. Box 309, Inez, KY 41224, or delivered in person to 42 East Main Street, Inez.

Lafferty also addressed the department’s staffing shortage, saying the team is often limited to six or seven workers.

“We’re lucky if we can put together two crews for all the different things that we do,” said Lafferty. “If it’s out pushing snow, during floods, trying to get the weeds cut, trying to assess, follow up and correct damage from major flooding.”

Flood-related damage has left the department behind on district-level work, the judge said. To catch up, the court approved hiring up to 10 seasonal, part-time workers at a rate of $12 per hour. These workers will operate under the supervision of Road and Bridge Superintendent Titus Marcum.

To further assist with roadside maintenance, the county is also purchasing a tractor with a 16-foot articulating arm to clear overgrown tree canopies.

“We’ve got places where the canopy is worse than the weeds,” Lafferty noted.