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Clean water on the way to some rural Pike County residents

Rudy and Peter Skitterians
/
Pixabay.com

Residents in a rural part of eastern Kentucky are getting access to clean drinking water. Over 700-thousand dollars from the Cleaner Water Program has been given to the Mountain Water District in Pike County.

Roy Sawyers is the district’s administrator. He said many people on the Brushy/Sycamore extension area are still using wells for their water.

“It’s vitally important for anyone as far as their health, to drink water that we have treated and provided potable water service to the residents, because if a person doesn’t sample their well and take to someone to review it, I don’t know how bad it’s contaminated.”

He said the water won’t come overnight.

“It is a slow process; I’d say nine to twelve months to get it all done the way we want it. We have everything approved and in place except for just bidding it. Once we receive the funding on this we’ll go ahead and bid the project and let it out.”

The money will be used to provide potable water service to around 125 residents who have never had access to public water service. Sawyers says the project will consist of installing approximately ten miles of water line and will take anywhere from nine to twelve months to complete. The funding is administered by the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority.

Stan Ingold is WEKU's News Director. He has worked in public broadcasting for 18 years, starting at Morehead State Public Radio before spending the past 10 years at Alabama Public Radio. Stan has been honored with numerous journalism awards for his public radio reporting.
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