Rural areas need more help with water issues
MARIETTA — Diane Fleming has lived in her house on Michigan Avenue since 1974.
She’s watched her rural southeastern Ohio community, Devola, a planned subdivision just outside of Marietta, deteriorate over the years. Well-manicured lawns and ranch-style homes have become run-down rentals. A couple years ago, police uncovered a meth lab a few blocks away.
“It’s kind of sad to watch,” the 77-year-old said.
Most folks in the community are on fixed incomes. Fleming and her husband, Phil, are retired and live off their savings.
Encircled by the Muskingum River, Devola is a “Census designated place in Washington County” — too small for its own ZIP code, but established enough to be a zoned community separate from the city of Marietta, 3 miles downriver where the Muskingum meets the Ohio River.
Simmering long before pandemic and economic tensions was the decade-long dilemma over how Devola would afford to renovate its sewer system after the state EPA found an unhealthy level of nitrates in the groundwater in 2011, affecting 563 households, and ordered an overhaul.
This kind of order is not uncommon.
Over the past decade, two dozen Ohio communities have been required to “remedy unsanitary conditions,” an EPA agency spokesperson said, adding that those communities have received nearly $23 million in a combination of low-no interest loans and principal forgiveness — $9 million in loans that do not have to be repaid.
The cost to re-sewer Devola, which would have fallen on the shoulders of the community’s residents by tens of thousands of dollars per household, was significantly reduced by the state during the first allocation of the $250 million Ohio Broadband, Utilities and Infrastructure for Local Development Success (BUILDS) program.
“It’s exciting to know we’re getting some help because the bigger cities usually get the bigger chunk of any assistance. I do think the Appalachian area gets overlooked a lot,” Fleming said. “They think we’re not as needy and backwoodsy.”
Gov. Mike DeWine announced last month that 54 water projects across 60 Ohio counties would be funded with $93 million of BUILDS dollars, including $10 million — the largest amount any project received — for Devola.
That $10 million investment paired with an additional $1.75 million in grants will significantly subsidize the roughly $18 million project, Washington County Commissioner Kevin Ritter said.
“It was good news, and I’m sure it’s going to be helpful to a lot of us,” Fleming added. “But it’s still a grey area when it comes to how much it’s going to cost us individually.”
The Ohio Department of Development, which oversees the BUILDS funding, reported there were more than 1,200 requests for the money from various counties across the state, totaling more than $1.4 billion in projects.
So while Devola residents sort out how the state’s $10 million allocation will serve them, questions remain about how much additional funding needs to be set aside to address rural Ohio’s infrastructure needs.
The state’s historic investment highlights infrastructure needs
The governor’s announcement and the $10 million headed Devola’s way means Amy Disbrow and Casey Disbrow don’t have to worry about losing their house.
The couple has struggled since COVID-19. While still Casey works in IT at the local hospital, Amy quit her job as a teacher’s assistant in order to take care of the couple’s youngest child, who is autistic. They live paycheck to paycheck.
Amy’s father, Gary Douglas, lives next door to the Flemings on a combination of his pension, Social Security and military benefits — scraping together roughly $36,000 a year.
A few weeks ago, Casey was quick to offer a worstcase scenario.
“If something were to happen to me ... you better hope there’s a cardboard box big enough because we’re moving to Gary’s,” he said, laughing, but not joking.
After years of considering worst-case scenarios — that their family’s combined water-sewer bill would rise to over $110 a month and they’d be forced to bear the $12,000 per household tap-in fee to connect to Marietta’s sewer line through their property taxes — the Disbrows can breathe a little easier.
“To have at least two-thirds of it covered eases the worry about us having to come up with a large amount even though we don’t know yet what our portion will be,” Amy said.
Standing underneath a picnic nook outside the soccer fields in Devola late last month, DeWine emphasized to the crowd of residents, Washington County commissioners and dozens of others that his administration would continue to prioritize water infrastructure.
“One of the assets we all take for granted is water,” he said.
The funding for the BUILDS program came from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, but the governor was quick to dismiss the notion that the responsibility of addressing water inequities should be carried solely by the federal government.
“I don’t want to pass the buck,” DeWine said. “You could say (our investment) is a drop in the bucket, but $250 million is nothing to sneeze at.
“There’s also an opportunity to now go back to the legislature and ask for more,” he added.
Washington County Commissioner Kevin Ritter understands all too well that his county and Appalachian Ohio in general have been neglected by lawmakers in Columbus and Washington D.C. for decades.
Ritter said securing at least $11.75 million in funding (between the $10 million BUILDS program, $750,000 from the state EPA’s H2Ohio program and $1 million from the Army Corps of Engineers) will lower the cost of re-sewering Devola for its residents immensely.
But inconsistencies throughout the past decade, and a basic lack of communication between the county and Devola, have frustrated residents like the Disbrows and Flemings, they said.
“I wish we would’ve been informed this was all going on and had a chance to have input,” Amy Disbrow said. “That’s the biggest issue — all of this was done without any input from or knowledge of the people of Devola.”
Fighting for Devola over a decade
It’s been 10 years since Diane Fleming attended the first meeting that then-Washington County Commissioner Cora Marshall held at the firehouse down the road to talk about the EPA’s order.
“She wanted to throw us out but couldn’t,” Fleming said.
Marshall and her fellow commissioners struck a deal with Marietta to comply with the EPA’s decision by attaching Devola to Marietta’s sewer system, But those commissioners’ successors fought back, prompting then-Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine to file a lawsuit against the county on behalf of the EPA.
While the Putnam Community Water Association, the local, private water utility that is based in Devola, had created a reverse osmosis system, lowering the level of nitrates in residents’ drinking water, the EPA argued there was still an issue in the groundwater, according to court documents.
In 2018, a judge ruled that Washington County would have to honor the contract and the county’s newly elected commissioners resigned themselves to subsidize the cost of the roughly $18 million project.
After having lived in her home in Devola for 47 years, Fleming is grateful she won’t have to consider moving or manage bearing the full cost of the sewer project.
But the $10 million won’t cover the individual expenses that add up after construction crews tear through Devola residents’ yards, she said.
“They told us, right up front, ten years ago, that the expenses incurred from whatever destruction happens on your property comes out of your pocket,” Fleming said. “It’s going to affect a lot of people like us who can’t afford to replace shrubs, trees and lawns.”
Former health commissioner Dr. Dick Wittberg understands the Flemings’ concerns and believes Washington County was backed into a corner by the state EPA.
“It’s still a lot better than nothing,” he said. “But the question still has to come back to whether residents should be burdened with that cost when they have systems that are operating.”
U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, a Marietta Republican whose district includes Devola, has been fielding constituents complaints and several iterations of Washington County commissions’ frustrations for the past 10 years as well.
“Water systems and sewer systems are as important as roads and bridges – you could make the argument that they’re more important,” Johnson said. “And they desperately needed updated, so I’m grateful for a lot more emphasis on improving the quality of life for my people by the DeWine administration.”
The congressman added that while there’s been quibbling about the science – whether the nitrate issue remains or not – he’s not interested in relitigating the past.
Right now, there is an additional $3 million in “community project funding,” appropriations formally known as earmarks, that Johnson requested on behalf of the Devola project.
“You’re always going to have some people that always say it’s not enough, and that’s all relative,” Johnson said. “Would it cost a lot of money to raise the standards of Appalachian infrastructure to the quality of a downtown Columbus? Yes. But do we do that all at one time or do we do that more fiscally responsibly?”
When it comes to Devola, Wittberg acknowledges that the residents’ septic tanks would eventually fail and have to be replaced, regardless of the nitrate issue. But the cost of re-sewering, even subsidized, is unfair, he said.
“You know residents that did not have to pay much of anything for their sewer before are gonna be faced with a significant bill, and I know that’s gonna hurt quite a few people,” Wittberg said. “So, again, it comes down to: Did this have to be done now? Did this have to be done in this matter?”