Published: August 12, 2006 12:26 am      

‘Not just cloudy, but brown’

Clearing up water in Mannington area ‘tough, tough problem’

FAIRMONT — For the last month, the spouting out of dirty brown water from faucets fed through Mannington’s public system has been a common occurrence.

However, despite efforts to clean up the lines since the problems began, customers receiving service directly from Mannington’s system and from an affiliate system in Rachel have been struggling with water issues to no avail. Consequently, several sources confirmed these issues are occurring due to an influx of a naturally occurring chemical called manganese in the pipes.

“It’s very, very dirty water,” said Rachel resident Becky Whetsell. “It’s brown — not just cloudy, but brown. In this last month, the water has never even been to where you want to drink it.”

Additionally, the owner of Mario’s restaurant in Mannington also admits to having significant problems with dirty water as of late.

“I’ve had to pay a water bill for dirty water for the last month,” said owner Paul Mascolino. “I can’t serve water from the faucets. I have to use bottled water, and it’s costing between $50 and $60 a month for bottled water.”

Mascolino added that they have to boil water for pasta and other cooking and cleaning needs and said two of his employees have even gotten sick from drinking the discolored liquid from the restaurant.

“It’s not consistently dirty all of the time, but for the last month it has not been looking good,” he said. “Eighty-five percent of the stuff we do in this restaurant uses city water, and it just doesn’t look like something you would want to drink.”

For Whetsell, in addition to her regular water bill that has stayed the same despite the quality of the product, she has also spent extra money buying bottled water to use for drinking and washing dishes and clothes.

“It’s becoming expensive,” she said. “We’ve even had clothes we’ve had to throw away because you can’t get the stains out.”

Whetsell lives outside of Mannington and receives her water from Downs Public Service District, an affiliate of the city’s treatment plant that serves a just fewer than 500 customers in the Rachel area.

Like in Mannington, Downs PSD customers have been struggling profusely with this problem for the last month. Chairman Bob Farley said they are trying to fix the problem by flushing out the system.

“We’ve flushed over 300,000 gallons of water on the ground, and they want me to flush more,” said Farley. “We hope if we keep flushing it’ll clear up, but we sure are wasting a lot of water.”

Farley added that it is very frustrating dealing with this because ultimately, it is out of his hands and up to Mannington to fix, for that is where Downs PSD’s water is fed from.

“We expected the problem to be cleared up two to three days from when it started, but it’s still going on,” he said. “We have to make sure Mannington has it clear before we can clear it, and Mannington said they are doing all they can so we are just going to keep flushing until it gets better.”

While Farley looks to Mannington to ultimately address the issue, he said that the actual occurrence of manganese in the system could not really be attributed to anyone.

“We’re not pointing fingers and we’re not blaming people. It’s just something that happened,” he said.

One official from the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health in Phillipi, who has been working on this issue, said the original occurrence of manganese in the system was cleared up just after it was spotted. However, he added that some of this iron-like chemical got out into the pipes before it was completely cleaned up, and that is what is now dirtying up the system.

Therefore, he added that the way to clear it up once and for all is to keep flushing, which is consequently becoming an expensive task for Rachel.

“We have beat our heads against the wall, basically,” said Rachel Councilman Tom Bowman . “We’re a small system and we have a small budget, but we’re spending thousands of dollars a month trying to fix the problem.”

Since these problems began, Rachel has been in a state of water emergency. Although Bowman said things are getting a little better as time goes on, there is still a significant issue with the overall water quality within the town, which he added cannot really be fixed until Mannington takes some action.

“We have done everything we can do,” he said. “Until Mannington clears up their problem, there’s nothing else we can do.”

On Mannington’s end, Mayor Lenny Stafford said the city is doing everything it can to clean things up, but that it is simply just a hard issue to tackle.

“Our guys have been trying everything and anything,” he said. “We’ve got some of the best in business out there, but it’s just a tough, tough problem.”

Presently, the city is working on a project to run a 13-mile line from Fairmont to Mannington to feed water from a path along Route 250, which should definitely alleviate some of these types of problems. However, Stafford said this project is still a good 15-20 months away from completion.

Therefore, residents of Mannington and its surrounding areas have no choice but to wait until the system is flushed enough to clean it up.

In Rachel, the county will be providing public water for free to residents at Downs PSD on weekdays between 9:00 a.m. and noon until the problem gets better.

“I can’t stress how well the county has responded,” said Bowman. “They’ve been on top of this, and I can’t thank them enough for what they’ve done.”

Although the water in both Rachel and Mannington definitely has issues, there will be days when it will be OK. However, Whetsell said even after a good day it could come back even worse the next, so she never knows what to expect.

“You’ll have a day where it gets clearer, and the next day it’ll be back to brown,” she said. “We’re afraid to get excited anymore because it’s gone bad so many times.”

E-mail Mallory Panuska at: mpanuska@timeswv.com.