Gov. Jim Justice throws the first pitch at the site of a planned Marshall University baseball stadium after presenting the school with a $13.8 million check for the stadium project during a Sept. 29, 2022, ceremony. But instead of the West Virginia Water Development Authority’s Economic Enhancement Grant program covering the check as the state announced it would, a Governor’s Office-controlled fund that the office transferred $28.3 million in unused CARES Act dollars into supplied $10 million for the project.
Gov. Jim Justice throws the first pitch at the site of a planned Marshall University baseball stadium after presenting the school with a $13.8 million check for the stadium project during a Sept. 29, 2022, ceremony. But instead of the West Virginia Water Development Authority’s Economic Enhancement Grant program covering the check as the state announced it would, a Governor’s Office-controlled fund that the office transferred $28.3 million in unused CARES Act dollars into supplied $10 million for the project.
Access to clean water has been a problem in West Virginia since the state’s inception. But it’s hard to believe a problem that plagued the coal camps of the early 1900s is still an issue in 2025.
In many West Virginia communities, especially more rural ones, access to clean water is as big of a problem as it is in most Third World nations. Water infrastructure, where it exists, is in utter disrepair. When faucets work, they spew out contaminated sludge that’s brown or orange. Some people trek to springs or runoff points to fill large containers, because the water there is safer than what comes out of the tap.
The problem has always been priority and money. The state has never placed the proper emphasis on making sure all West Virginians have access to clean, running water. And the problem is so bad now, it would take billions of dollars to fix statewide.
But to see state agencies wasting money that could go to helping West Virginians get clean, reliable water is infuriating.
The Legislature tried to address the problem in 2022, creating the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund that would allow money to be distributed by the state Water Development Authority. The grants are funded by federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act.
However, a report in the Gazette-Mail shows only 37% of the funds authorized by the Water Development Authority have gone toward Public Service Districts for water projects.
Meanwhile, $80 million has gone to nonwater and nonsewer projects, including a $5 million grant facilitated by Delegate Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, and members of former Gov. Jim Justice’s administration that went to a private college with fewer than 50 students in Steubenville, Ohio. Another $3.8 million was steered by Justice to Marshall University for a new baseball stadium.
Meanwhile, public service districts in the state’s most desperate counties with the biggest need for water improvements — those in the southern coalfields — have only received about 0.59% of the funding from the economic development grants — a paltry $2.59 million.
It’s no wonder that people in those counties feel abandoned.
Even when there’s money available to help, state leaders have proven time and again they will misuse it, leaving the people they’re supposed to represent to suffer.
