El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago held one of his organized wankfests in Kentucky Monday night. He tested out a few new riffs and sold a new branded T-shirt that said, "Read The Transcript." (It's not a transcript and what he released makes him look worse. Even his swag lies.) He went down there to try and haul the expiring political carcass of Governor Matt Bevin, the country's most unpopular governor, across the finish line, and to give Senator Aqua Buddha another chance to abase himself, which young Mr. Paul did with alacrity, edging right up to the line of outing the whistleblower and demanding that the media break that law on his behalf. Sit, Rand. Good dog.

Anyway, here, from NPR, is a story about an issue in Kentucky that didn't come up at Monday night's festivities. Folks there drank dirty water until enough of them got sick to make it a political issue. At which point, the water got cleaned up and now those same people can't afford to drink it any more. Coming and going.



"You just stick your jug under there and just catch the water as it comes out, one jug at a time," Davis says. This has become routine for some in Martin County, a rural, mountainous community on Kentucky's border with West Virginia. The area has made news for decades for its notoriously dirty water supply. But now, efforts to fix that have led to another crisis: Many are unable to afford their water bills.

The water that comes out of Martin County taps can be cloudy at times. There are boil-water advisories and pipes so leaky that most of the water is lost before it reaches residents' taps. For years, residents received monthly advisories that some people exposed to the chemicals in their water "may experience problems with their liver, kidneys, or central nervous system, and may have an increased risk of getting cancer."

Local officials are trying to fix all that, and they say the water is now safe to drink, save for occasional problems. But this has taken a lot of money, and the cost of that has been passed on to customers. After a series of increases, water rates went up 41% last year alone.



Clean water is a basic human right. It has to be, because clean water is a basic necessity for all earthly species, animal and vegetable. And, as we note here in the shebeen from time to time, clean water is becoming a volatile political issue in a lot of places. Flint is the obvious prime example. Water is central to the resistance against expanded pipelines. A while back, astronomical water bills, and the city's draconian enforcement tactics, put people out in the streets of Detroit. And Ireland nearly tore itself apart over water bills back in 2014. As the climate crisis deepens, the issue of clean water will become more explosive. Before this century is out, we are going see wars over it, just as we saw them over oil.



Martin County, Kentucky, is plagued by a dilapidated water system. Bonnie Jo Mount Getty Images

Back in Kentucky, the issue falls hardest on the people whom the president* regularly cites as his base, and for whom he says he has done all manner of wonderful things.



A 2018 rate increase made Martin County's near-undrinkable water the eighth most expensive in the state, according to a recent affordability analysis. Since then, Mary Cromer, an attorney who represents Martin County residents in their battle with water regulators, says she sees more people struggling to pay their bills. Last year, the county made news when it arrested a man accused of stealing water by illegally hooking his home to another family's meter. This past summer, authorities sent disconnect letters to 300 houses, about 10% of all homes served.



Good thing that coal is coming back, the way the president* said it would.



The Martin County water board is stockpiling bottled water for the neediest, but it faces significant challenges. Major coal companies have recently declared bankruptcy, leaving hundreds of miners in the region out of work. Once a coal-producing powerhouse, Martin County has seen total employment fall by 32% since July 2010. Industry troubles also mean Martin County's annual revenue from the coal severance tax fell 81% from 2012 to 2018. Similar declines in neighboring coal-reliant communities have prompted some to cut back on services like trash collection. A recent report from the Brookings Institution and Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy noted that the loss of coal revenue could send at least 26 U.S. counties into financial insolvency.

The cost of doing nothing, of course, continues to rise, because American, that's why. Our water infrastructure is in horrendous shape, and some of the worst of it lies in the areas most vulnerable to contamination by industrial waste.



"We are dealing with systems that are old," says Colette Easter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The group has found that America's drinking water infrastructure needs a $105 billion investment in repairs, including more than $8 billion in Kentucky. And Easter says declining population can compound the challenges facing all rural systems, as fixed costs are spread among fewer ratepayers. "The only way you can fix infrastructure without affecting rates is if someone gives you the money," says Andrew Melnykovych, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Public Service Commission. But federal and state grants for repairs are harder to come by. "Absent some dramatic change at both the state and the federal level, that grant money is just not out there in the kind of quantity needed to address water infrastructure needs," he says.



So what are the people supposed to do? This isn't a shortage of cellphones or WiFi we're talking about. Human beings need clean water or they die. Period. And making them choose between clean water and food or electricity is inexcusable in this country. Of course, living with the inexcusable is an adjustment we've all had to make in one way or another.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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