Kemper County water customers seek to oust board members after months of outages, low pressure

By Alex Rozier | Originally published by Mississippi Today

PORTERVILLE – In the forested expanses of Kemper County, a couple in their 80s haven’t had running water for 11 months. Yet just like any other customers, they receive a bill each month in the mail. Theirs is for $40. 

Willie and Pauline Thompson told Mississippi Today they aren’t positive what happened, largely because officials at the Porterville Water Association aren’t exactly jumping to take their phone calls. 

They first noticed low pressure issues in 2015, Willie Thompson said, when another house was connected to the system in what’s otherwise a sparsely populated area. Then finally last May, as Pauline Thompson was getting ready to celebrate her 80th birthday, their faucets gave out entirely. 

“And I’ve been paying a bill ever since,” Willie Thompson said. 

Thompson said the association told him he had to keep paying bills to stay a member of the utility. Unlike municipal or private water systems, rural water associations are nonprofit organizations run by their customers. Members elect board members to oversee the infrastructure and its finances. 

Small water systems across the state have struggled with funding and replacing aging infrastructure, a Mississippi Today investigation last year found. Nearly 60% of systems had committed a violation in the past three years, according to federal data. 

For months, the Thompsons had to buy water from the store to drink and to flush their toilets. They still have to heat water on the stove for bathing. But recently, as word of their woes spread, community members have started delivering jugs to their house on Old Rock Road.

“It’s been frustrating and it’s kind of hard,” said Willie Thompson, who recently bought a plastic tank and pump so he can run water into their faucets. “I’m 83 years old, never had to get water like that.”

The Thompsons live about a 10-minute drive from Porterville, an unincorporated community with a population of 34. The Porterville Water Association, though, covers a wide-ranging area stretching across Kemper County and serves over 2,000 people. 

While the Thompsons’ experience exemplifies the worst of what’s happened with the rural water association, they’re just two of the many customers who have signed a petition looking to replace three of the seven board members. 

Tooney Hill, a customer who lives just outside Scooba, said he’s had low pressure issues for a couple years, adding that the water has so much chlorine that it bleaches his clothes in his washing machine. 

“You can’t drink it, it has a foul smell,” Hill said. “I’ve been testing pool water for over 30 years, and when your water has more chlorine than your swimming pool, you’ve got a problem.”

He said he’s had to spend thousands of dollars on new clothes as well as replacing appliances he alleges the water has also ruined. 

When Mississippi Today reached out to the water association for comment, it deferred questions to its attorney, Dustin Markham. Markham didn’t respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment. 

Davin Talbot, another customer who’s helping organize the petition, said they easily have over the 10% of member signatures required under the state’s nonprofit laws to replace the utility’s board members. 

Kirby Mayfield, director of the state’s Rural Water Association, said the problems worsened last year when one of the system’s longtime operators, Floyd Jenkins, died. The area’s geography doesn’t help: Due to the hilly terrain, the system needs a lot of pressure to function, and a single line burst could disrupt the whole flow, Mayfield said. 

“You got these hills and hollers, it don’t take very much of a leak to cause a person on top of one of them hills (like the Thompsons) to not have very good pressure,” he said. He said the system needs new lines to handle the amount of pressure needed.  

Rep. Billy Calvert, a Republican who lives in Meridian but is from Porterville and has property in the utility’s service area, said he supports the petition’s effort to replace the board members.

“You have a board that’s just not doing their job and not being proactive,” Calvert told Mississippi Today. 

Calvert pointed to recently passed legislation creating more oversight of rural water systems. The law requires those systems to conduct regular rate and capacity studies, and enlists the state Department of Health with keeping a list of financially distressed systems. 

In response to the customers’ petition, the Porterville Water Association requested a temporary restraining order to prevent members from holding a special meeting. A Kemper County chancery judge granted the order and has set a May 19 hearing date to discuss the matter.

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article