We Have a Mine Shaft Gap!

So... last Sunday I was facilitating a bible study at First Welch and somehow we got onto the topic of water. Folks in McDowell County do not generally drink their tap water (or cook with it), but purchase water for those things instead. I had not really thought too much about it. After all, I grew up in the Kanawha Valley, where chemical plants line the river like Christmas lights on the National Lampoon house. You don't drink the water from the Kanwaha River (or eat the fish you catch) because only God knows what kind of chemical has been dumped into the river. So, purchasing water to drink is pretty standard in my neck of the woods.

Then there is the reality that a great many people in West Virginia do not have access to public water in their homes and rely on well water. Well water usually has a powerful sulfuric smell (and taste), so folks with well water often purchase drinking water from the store. Once again, no biggie.

So, when I moved to The County and discovered folks do not drink the water, I didn't think twice. I, however, did not feel safe heading down to the spring that comes out of the mountain beside Route 52 and gathering water. Nor did I desire to purchase drinking water just to be left with all those empty plastic bottles. Instead, I relied on my trusty Brita Water Pitcher to remove an chlorine taste that might linger, and I was happy.

However, it was revealed that Welch's drinking water comes from an abandoned mine shaft. These mine shafts are routinely flooded, and so we essentially are setting atop a huge underground lake.

"What?" I gasped, "The water comes from a mine shaft? And we're drinking THAT?"

Suddenly, the same people who had just been encouraging me to purchase drinking water and who insisted that "no one drinks Welch water" became very defensive.

"The water's cleaner here than it is in Charleston," one person said, offering a jab at me.

"It's clean," another stated matter-of-factly.

"But," I argued, "When water runs out of the mines and into the rivers, its acid run-off and it kills everything..."

"But you're getting it before it goes through the acid," a woman objected.

I blinked, stupidly. I had no idea where water in a coal mine ceased to be water and became acid run-off, so I had nothing I could say. I just sat there, listening to people who don't drink the water defend their water source. I wondered why they couldn't make the connection in their heads that a polluted water source is a polluted water source, regardless of what the coal companies tried to say. If it ain't safe to drink, it ain't acceptable!

"We're lucky," one gentleman said, "We're lucky we've got all these mine shafts filled with water. When it doesn't rain, other counties go into a drought, but we've got water."

What???

It seems people have all the pieces of the puzzle at their disposal, but they just don't have the vision to connect all the pieces to get the big picture. I suppose that's what my job is: to put the puzzle together.

One thing I can assure you, though: I'm not drinking the water.