BY NINA MCCOY

In the wake of our most recent brown water event, people are rightly concerned and looking for answers, and possibly someone to blame. You can be assured the water board and Alliance are working with several entities to figure out what happened, and we will continue to report on what happened and work toward preventing future occurrences.

Our county has been traumatized for over 25 years with drinking water issues and has been deemed statewide and nationally as a poster child for water problems. Add to that being the second-highest ratepayers in the state, and people are understandably frustrated.

The water board voted recently to petition the PSC to release their order. Despite the chairman’s assurance that we will maintain our contract with Alliance Water Resources, I fear that the political forces within the county will pressure the board to get rid of the outside management company.

I strongly argue that this is NOT the time to get rid of Alliance. The new chairman, Tim Thoma, currently works as a professional contractor travelling the country working on water and sewer projects in wealthier communities across the country. The sheer volume of his travel and work as a singular individual lends itself easily to the possibility that he might not be able to run the day-to-day operations for this system.

I appreciate the work he has done throughout the year with the local management. He has seen firsthand how hard these employees work and how difficult that is with a poor and broken system. Hopefully, he understands how important it is that we have a team of professionals, considering all the emergencies and problems our workers tackled over the last year.

Mr. Thoma knows contracts and engineering, but as a new resident, I question whether he fully grasps what it is like to work in a system run by political chaos.

We know what went on during various county administrations. We have heard from our trusted friends and neighbors and seen in evidence from past PSC investigations: politicians forcing the water company to turn the water back on for political allies despite nonpayment; contractors hiring relatives or local cronies as inspectors who may or may not be qualified or show up to work; workers subsidizing their low income by filling up their personal vehicles with gas, sitting in their trucks to claim overtime, or buying materials at hardware stores for personal use on the company’s account; bills not being paid; audits not being done; chemicals being shoveled instead of measured. All of which made our system poorer and our rates higher.

Add to that an Area Development District in conjunction with county, state, and federal officials that work hard to make sure the projects that benefit the well-to-do are well-funded or shoved off poorly done onto the ratepayers, while often refusing to assure that money appropriated for the well-being of the entire system is properly allocated. Cases in point: a $3 million project in 2000 that was supposed to rehabilitate the dilapidated plant or get a pump for the river, neither of which were done; a 2019 project that was supposed to get water to the new high school that is way too big for the school itself and was built without telemetry or a way to divert the extra water to other locations; a 2017 project that was supposed to get a pump for the river (again?) and is still not functional in 2025, leading to our current unaffordability and brown water crises.

It might be easiest to place the blame with the “outsiders” – the management company from Missouri who is making a profit by running our water system. But let’s just think for a minute.

First, most of those people who work in the freezing cold, the blistering heat, throughout long nights (often into the next day) live right here. They are not trying to sabotage the system. Second, the company bosses being from “outside” removes them from the possible influence of cronyism, favoritism, or cutting corners and has added outside aid in emergencies. Third, the profit made from running this system in a professional manner does not outweigh the cost of making fixes that are jerry-rigged or subpar. Lastly, anyone who isn’t a die-hard socialist shouldn’t really see an evil in making an honest profit.

The job of the water board is to make sure they are doing the best for our publicly owned utility. We do not have the time, expertise, or wherewithal to run this massive system. Alliance with our local workers and the water board (current and previous) have brought the system way up: audits are done, water loss is down, outages are rare. Yes, there are still problems. But nothing like where we have been. We cannot go backwards.

Nina McCoy is a retired science teacher and longtime environmental advocate living in Inez, Kentucky. After teaching for 31 years, she turned her focus to activism, driven in part by the 2000 coal slurry spill that contaminated local waterways. For more than two decades, McCoy has been a leading voice on water quality and infrastructure issues in Martin County, pressing for transparency, accountability and safe drinking water. She serves as chair of Martin County Concerned Citizens, a grassroots organization in Eastern Kentucky. She also serves on the Martin County Water Board, where she continues to push for improvements that protect public health and the environment.