Will Lancing residents finally get drinkable water?

Will Lancing residents finally get drinkable water?

By DON DARE
6 On Your Side Reporter

LANCING (WATE) -- Some residents of Morgan County's Lancing community have been fighting for decent water for seven years because their well water is corrosive. Now, they may get help from Washington.

At one time in East Tennessee, getting water from a well was the norm. But it's not that way now.

However, in Lancing, about 10 miles from Wartburg, people can't drink their water or wash their clothes in it.

"We've had rain. It's not super bad. It's still bad, but if we don't have rain, it has so much iron you can't even cook with it," Reba Bates said.

At Sharon Holley's house, the water's no good to drink either. She and her relatives buy bottled water because the water from their tap has too much iron in it. They say they can't drink it.

They also say they can't wash their clothes in it because, as Ruth Scarboro put it, "It turns them red."

The people in Lancing are proud. Families settled here and started farming in the 1850's. A graveyard on the Bates farm is the resting place of a soldier from the Civil War.

But they've never had good water here and have been fighting to get it from the county for years.

"One time we gave the water department some water. They said it would so bad that we shouldn't drink it," Reba Bates said. 

David Holley took 6 On Your Side into the old pump house that's been around for half a century.  "We ain't got enough water to do anything, can't take a regular bath when we want to," he said. 

Holley said the deep well "goes three hundred and some feet" and he repairs the pipes once a year in order to keep water flowing to several families.

"It works fair, but if we don't get a lot of rain we ain't got no water," Holley said.

There is county water that runs along the highway about a quarter of mile from the Bates farm. But Stanley Bates' mother, Bonnie, now has serious kidney problems and has to drink lots of clear water, so the stakes are even higher.

"The water company told us they were going to put water in here, but that was over a year and a half ago," Stanley Bates said. 

The families have been told the cost of installing a water line is too expensive because the soil is too rocky. They've also been told there aren't enough people living here to make it cost effective.

"It's the computer age and people can't have clean water. It's ridiculous," Stanley Bates said. 

But Morgan County Executive Becky Ruppe is hopeful she's found some money. She keeps a book filled with names of people in her county who have bad water. She knows about the Bates and their neighbors.

Ruppe went to Washington five months ago seeking a special appropriation. "We asked for $550,000 to get water to Stanley Bates and Anna Dale Road, about 20 families and 80 people."

Ruppe is optimistic that by sometime next year, the water will be clean and safe to drink.

Ruppe says news about the special appropriation should be known in a few months. The dozens of families requesting the help will be grateful if the money comes through.

If you have a consumer issue, call the 6 On Your Side hotline at (865)-633-5974.