Bailey now works as a family doctor in two southern West Virginia counties.
Residents seeking such springs already know where they are.
Nobody is testing the water that’s running out of the mine in Marianna.
••• Apart from her work at Tug River Health Association, Dr. Joanna Bailey is involved in a crusade to get decent drinking water for her family and neighbors, and if successful, those efforts could lend credence to concerns that water can make people sick.
In Wyoming County and throughout Southern West Virginia, a handful of communities are on sewage systems that use “straight pipes.” Those pipes can dump raw sewage directly into rivers, including the Guyandotte, the water supply for Pineville and dozens of other towns in the region.
In McConnell and Stollings, two unincorporated areas along the Guyandotte near the city of Logan, a series of straight pipes pump sewage into the river.
Stanley said the pipe system leading to the river backs up regularly, leaving her neighborhood reeking of sewage from the murky water that pools along the road and railroad tracks.
“Any time they play after it rains, that’s what I see.” Walt Ivey, director of the West Virginia Office of Environmental Health Services, said raw sewage pooling in neighborhoods like this is a concern to the state Bureau of Public Health — especially after a Hepatitis A outbreak that infected more than 1,700 individuals in the state since March.
That happens four or five times a year, she said.
As for Montgomery, after she finishes school, she may move out of the neighborhood entirely.