Curtis Millner is taking part in one of Henry County’s oldest conflicts. It involves a majority Black neighborhood’s decades-long effort to reliably source clean potable water and the financial hurdles keeping them from doing so.
During the Aug. 19 meeting of the Public Service Authority, Millner and the other PSA members crammed into a small conference room for bad news: Their most recent grant application had failed, and they would have to continue searching for funds to bridge Henry County’s water line into a neighborhood where residents face unreliable well water.
“For the most part, people don’t want to drink the water,” Millner said, contextualizing an issue that, depending on who you speak to, is between years or decades old.
Millner lives in Laurel Park with his wife, Virginia. While not a resident of the affected area, he has gotten to know residents via his efforts to expand the county system.
Millner said that while the water is technically safe to drink, ongoing issues, like excess sediment, bacteria and odor, have disincentivized neighbors from doing so.
The neighborhood is in the vicinity of Stoney Mountain Road and Virginia 57. The county’s water infrastructure runs up to but abruptly ends just beyond this area, creating a cluster of well water users, which isn’t rare for the state.
The Virginia Department of Health states that the majority of households in 60 of Virginia’s 95 counties rely on well water. Henry County has 12,369 active water accounts, which the county estimates at 25% of possible households.
Expanding a water system into a particular neighborhood is far from unheard of, particularly if Henry County’s line runs close to the affected area, said Michael Ward, Henry County’s director of regulatory compliance and technical applications.
In the affected neighborhood, the county’s water line ends at a fire station on Virginia 57, according to Millner.
County water vs. well water: monitoring makes the difference
Ward said that water quality issues have been among the reasons neighborhoods have sought inclusion in the county’s system.
Henry County sources its water supply from the Smith River while undergoing a process that isn’t available to most well water users. It’s because of this, Ward said customers usually see an uptick in quality when transitioning.
Transitioning from well water to a local system usually increases quality due to the frequency of monitoring and treatment.
“We test every day,” Ward said. “We take 30 bacteria samples every month, and we do a certain number every week and that’s throughout the whole water system.”
Ward said even a sudden addition of hundreds of homes to the system wouldn’t be prohibitively taxing to the system.
“The plant was originally built in 1984, and we just had a plant expansion that finished in 2021,” Ward said. “It went from 4 million gallons a day to 6 million gallons a day.”
Millner and county school board member Ben Gravely said expansion is the next logical step for neighborhoods just outside the existing water lines. When Gravely was a child, personal well water systems were preferrable to manually retrieving water from a nearby source.
Millner said hooking up to a more regulated communal system represents a natural progression.
Bringing the system to the 21st century
“It’s called progress. Nobody wants to live in the dark ages anymore,” Millner said over the sound of a running faucet at the neighborhood’s community center.
The center has a small kitchen, so it wasn’t long before the faint smell of sulfur became more noticeable. After a few minutes, the smell wafted past the kitchen’s confines into the general meeting area. Even after the water was turned off, the smell lingered.
“This is what we’ve been living with,” Millner said about the smell and condition of the water, which varies from home to home.
It’s almost been a year since Millner began serving as the PSA’s Iriswood District representative. The position not only allows him to emphasize the issue, it also affords him a top-down perspective, something he didn’t have when he was just a concerned citizen.
At $10 million, Millner knows that the project’s major bottleneck is funding.
“The PSA is the one that has to move forward with [the project],” Millner said, reiterating that while the county is aware of the issue, the authority to secure grant funding and initiate a water system extension is under the purview of the PSA.
“We do not receive any funds from the county but generate our own through sale of service,” Millner said. The PSA’s current fiscal year’s budget is $14.2 million, and $15.0 million in the previous fiscal year.
While the PSA is focused on securing grant funding, Millner said a loan from the county is a possible route.
Obstacles to extending the water line are numerous, as are ways in which well water can be bad for residents
Recently, the PSA’s grant application to the Virginia Department of Health Office of Drinking Water was not successful.
“Henry County Public Service Authority has been diligently working to bring water service to your area,” reads a letter sent in February to affected residents. “The PSA applied in 2023 for VDH funding to extend the water line to your area; however, the application was unsuccessful due, in part, to poor participation in community water service surveys.”
That survey was distributed to neighbors in the affected area, asking if they were experiencing water-related issues and gauging their willingness to connect to county water.
Millner said community consensus is an important factor. While he is confident that the majority would like to make the transition, not everyone in the neighborhood is on board with transitioning to the county’s system out of fear of having to pay the county’s rates.
In 2024, a single-family connection is $30 per month for the first 4,000 gallons. After that, it’s $4.70 for every 1,000 gallons used.
Households using private wells don’t have to pay for water. Not every home in the neighborhood is dealing with water quality issues.
Millner described it as “varied.” While some households are dealing with odors, others may have entirely different problems, or none at all.
“I can’t use my cold water because there is so much sand in it,” Carolyn Noel said.
Noel lives in a cul-de-sac in the affected area. Her door was wide open even before Millner rang the doorbell as a courtesy. Her home is cozy, decorated with an assortment of knickknacks.
She said the sediment in her water affects more than just her water quality. It also affects her pocketbook. There was a time when the amount of sediment reached a point where it burst her pipes.
“I have messed up three [washing] machines with sand,” Noel said.
Water quality tests backed up Millner’s claim of differences and similarities among residents in the area. The PSA conducted tests of 30 households in March of last year. They showed the presence of coliform in the water of 17 of the 30 households sampled.
Virginia’s Department of Health describes coliform as an indicator for other harder-to-detect bacteria, known as pathogens. These pathogens could lead to a number of health issues, including diarrhea, headaches, cramps and nausea.
“While most coliforms are not pathogens, they serve as indicators of the microbial quality of water,” reads information from the Virginia Department of Health on well water safety. “Pathogens — the bacteria, protozoa, and viruses that make people sick — can be rare and difficult to detect even if they are present in the water.”
In recent years, more neighbors have learned about the potential danger, and Millner said more are on board with making the transition. Noel is among them, saying she would request a connection if the county line were extended.
Millner said Noel and her neighbors have a choice. If the PSA manages to secure project funding, the system extension would be along the road and not across individual properties. This means homeowners dealing with water quality issues could opt in to the municipal system while those who are happy with well water could opt out.
It’s going to take time. Millner said the next step after securing funding is to accept project bids prior to construction. There is also the business of letting households know about the change and helping them weigh the pros and cons of connecting to the county.
“We’re certainly doing our best,” Millner said. “It would probably be about one or two years, the whole process.”
Looking forward, Millner said the PSA will continue searching for possible sources of funding. He and his fellow board members are currently waiting to hear if their pending grant with the Virginia Department of Health will be successful. In the meantime, Millner refuses to let the issue become his proverbial white whale, saying a resolution isn’t a question of if but when.