A reservoir that supplies thousands of Eastern Kentuckians with drinking water has fallen to a critically low level over the past month, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency and raising fear among residents that their faucets will run dry.
While Kerr said officials are not concerned about another water outage, the board passed a resolution last week declaring a state of emergency.
In an interview Friday, Kerr said problems with the intake pump need to be fixed as soon as possible, but assured the Herald-Leader residents should not be concerned about losing access to running water.
The district is currently pursuing a rate increase of about 18 percent to cope with mounting debt and a long list of overdue operational repairs, including leaking service lines that cause the district to lose a majority of the water it treats before it reaches customers.
PSC officials have been highly critical of the district for its past and current management practices, which officials say caused the district’s current crisis.
The district now is managed by interim manager Greg Scott, who Cromer said has been unable to right the district’s ship despite his best efforts.
“They need to hire a professional general manager,” Cromer said.
BarbiAnn Maynard, a district customer and vocal member of the Martin County Concerned Citizens group, described the district’s attempts to correct the ongoing problems as “putting Band-aids on a severed artery.” “And we have no more blood to bleed out,” Maynard said.
By Will Wright Maynard said she now hopes the Public Service Commission will put the district into a state of receivership, which would give control of the water district to an outside utility.
District officials have often refuted claims of poor quality, though, saying the district meets all federal quality guidelines.