After more than two days without access to water, about 65 residents of Prenter, a Boone County town with a long history of water woes, should soon have service restored, following a snafu that began when some vandals stole copper wire from an electric substation.
Parts of Prenter that are not on West Virginia American Water's municipal water network have been without water since Wednesday, residents said.
Under a longstanding agreement, about 25 Prenter households receive community well water that is pumped to a water tower on top of a hill before being piped back to the houses.
The electric substation that powers the pump, supplying the water, was, for years, owned by Peabody Coal and then its spinoff, Patriot Coal. It is now owned by a company called ERT Compliant Fuel, which bought much of Patriot's operations in August as Patriot went through bankruptcy proceedings.
Earlier this week, Appalachian Power became aware that the fence around the substation had been cut away and copper wire had been stolen from the facility, power company spokesman Phil Moye said.
Moye said they had to cut service because, without the copper grounding wires, the substation was unsafe to operate.
But nobody at Appalachian Power or ERT realized that cutting the power would also cut the water to the 25 households, the Prenter community center and a union hall in Prenter.
"We weren't aware, and I think the people who own the property were not aware, that the water pump was part of what was being served by that station," Moye said.
He said that even if they had known that cutting the power would have cut off water, they would have to cut it for safety reasons - although, if they had known about the water problem, "probably things would have happened more quickly," he said.
When the power was cut, the flow of water to the tank was also cut. The tank had about two days of water in it, said Prenter resident Gini Nelson. By Wednesday, water service was gone.
West Virginia American Water, which provides service to most of Prenter, but not the affected households, sent a tank of water to the town's community center Friday, Nelson said. Members of the WV Clean Water Hub were organizing deliveries of jugged and bottled water to the area.
On Friday afternoon an ERT contractor and Appalachian Power crews were working to repair the substation, get the power back on and restore water service.
Marion Bias, a Prenter resident, said she was told water would be back "sometime [Friday]," although Nelson said she wasn't sure when the work would be done. Moye said, "it really depends on how quickly the contractor makes the repairs."
But restoring water will not fix all of Prenter's water problems.
Nelson's family uses the water for bathing and cleaning, but won't drink it.
"It's a short-term fix, even if the water gets turned back on, we need something better," she said. "It hasn't been drinkable for at least 15 years."
Prenter residents have long complained that they were getting sick from polluted well water. They've cited high rates of gallbladder and kidney disease, urinary tract infections and tooth decay. They've pointed the finger at coal companies, which, for decades have stored toxic coal slurry in huge earthen impoundments or injected it in abandoned underground mines.
In 2009, West Virginia American Water Company expanded its network to include much of Prenter, so most households no longer need to rely on well water. But the 25 households affected by the recent outage, about 3 miles from West Virginia American's pipes, remain on "community water."
Prenter's water problems are well documented, including in a high-profile New York Times investigation that used the town as the poster boy for neglected clean water laws nationwide.
In 2012, on the eve of a much-anticipated trial, Alpha Natural Resources settled with 350 Boone County residents who filed a lawsuit claiming that coal slurry had contaminated their water. The lawsuit, which was filed against Massey Energy before Alpha bought that company, was settled for undisclosed terms.
In 2009, Massey and four other coal companies settled a coal slurry contamination suit brought by Seth and Prenter residents. The companies admitted no guilt, but agreed to not inject slurry in the area, pay $45,000 and provide drinking water to those in the area. A 2012 study by the state Department of Environmental Protection did not find widespread impacts to groundwater quality, although reports commissioned by lawyers for Prenter residents did find contamination.
The DEP later issued a clarification to its report after a citizen, looking at the DEP data, noticed that regulators had overlooked a violation of pollution limits for lead in one well.
Nelson said that the Boone County Commission, cash-strapped with closed mines and plunging tax revenue, has told her it is too expensive to expand water lines to her community.
"But there has to be federal, state grants," she said. "Something to help us."
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.