Coal news and updates

The Limestone County Commission will consider Monday whether to allow a private water line in the public right of way on Dugger Road after attempts to find grant money for a public water line failed.

If approved the measure would allow property owners whose wells tested positive for bacterial contamination to pay for their own water lines that would tie into city water on nearby Piney Chapel Road.

The move comes after city and county officials tried and failed to get an emergency Community Development Block Grant to run a public water line down the road, which has just seven homes.

During an Athens City Council meeting last week, property owner Janette Kyle told councilmen she’s been working since February to access public water without success.

Kyle, who lives in Madison, told the council her family learned of a problem with their well on Dugger Road when her sister became ill after drinking the water, which later tested positive for E. coli bacteria.

Since then, they have been buying bottled water, using the well water only for bathing and laundry. Kyle said her sister and brother-in-law, a disabled Iraq War veteran, live in the Dugger Road home to care for her elderly mother, who is on hospice care.

“We’re getting desperate. My mother is dying,” Kyle said last week.

According to Mayor Ronnie Marks, Dugger Road is in the city’s water district, but it is outside the city limits, meaning Kyle needs approval from the county to run a private water line in the right of way.

Kyle said the city’s water department would not pay to run a public water line and the nearly $30,000 cost was more than she can afford. A private water line would cost less than $10,000 and is within their budget, she said.

According to County Engineer Bryant Moss, county officials had hoped grant money would allow for a single public line instead of multiple private lines that are more likely to be damaged when there is digging in the area. But District 1 Commissioner Stanley Hill said Wednesday grant money was not available and that he would move to allow private lines.

Marks said this week they had assumed the road would be approved for the grant, but only two wells on the road tested positive for the bacteria, making award of a CDBG grant unlikely.

“We thought we had a grant for an emergency basis really pretty much rubber-stamped for approval,” he said.

Despite treating the well and avoiding the water, Kyle told the council this week that her sister recently tested positive for the bacteria a second time. She said her neighbor, whose well also tested positive for bacterial contamination, does not plan to run a private water line.

That property owner declined to speak to The Decatur Daily.

Speculating the contamination resulted from chicken manure used as fertilizer on nearby fields, Kyle said she filed a complaint with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

Lynn Battles, a spokeswoman for ADEM, said they received a complaint about chicken litter blowing onto an adjacent property on Dugger Road, but an investigator did not see any chicken litter when he drove the road in March, and ADEM closed out the complaint.

The County Commission will consider the issue during its meeting at 10 a.m. Monday in the Clinton Street annex.

Source: Decatur Daily