By CAITY COYNE
Charleston Gazette-Mail
and MOLLY BORN
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
(West Virginia Public Broadcasting photo by Jesse Wright)
PINEVILLE, W.Va. — Dr. Joanna Bailey remembers crowding around the kitchen table with her family, carefully sticking stamps on the corners of her neighbors’ monthly water bills. Her dad managed water service in Glover, an old coal town along the Guyandotte River in Wyoming County.
When someone didn’t pay the bill, Bailey’s father would quietly let it slide, knowing that, without a shut-off valve, the water would keep flowing anyway.
One day, a woman mailed in a check for a dollar and some cents, along with a letter explaining that she’d deducted everything that she had to buy that month because she couldn’t use the discolored water that came out of her tap.
See more from the Charleston Gazette-Mail