Compiled by Lauren Benningfield, AV Staff

Donetta lives in Rawl, West Virginia. Mining has gone on there since before her husband’s family arrived in 1978. Coal sludge has gotten into the water and leaked into her well. Five years ago, before she and her family moved out to where they live now, they had no health problems. Donetta doesn’t drink or do drugs, but last year she was hospitalized for liver failure. Her mother-in-law suffers from pancreatis. Everyone in this house has headaches due to the nitrogen sulfate—when anyone takes a shower, the whole house smells like rotten eggs.

She has two children, a thirteen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy, and two stepchildren. Her stepdaughter, at the age of 19, had to have her gallbladder removed. Since they’ve moved to Rawl, both her children have developed asthma. Her daughter has stomach problems; her son has bumps all over his back and refuses to bathe in the contaminated water that makes it worse. Both wait until they can get to their grandparents’ home that has city water, and that can be nearly a week between visits.

Buying all bottled water is much too expensive. They take bottles and jugs to her parents’ place and fill them up for drinking water. With six people at home, Donetta can’t take her laundry elsewhere. She says sometimes she doesn’t know why she adds detergent to the water, since it doesn’t seem to do any good. On one occasion, she got a clean rag and sprayed a cleaning product on it. The product started to bubble and actually heat up.

Her son has trouble sleeping at night, due to the fear that the sludge impoundment above their home will give way. Donetta stays because she can’t afford to move her family elsewhere. They’re currently involved with a number of other community members in a lawsuit against the coal company; her husband says if they win, they’ll use the money to move. Finally, though, the city has been convinced to start building pipelines to get city water out to the people with contaminated well water. But it’s slow going.

Donetta works to get her story out there. She is also a member of OVEC. Donetta wants to give back to the volunteers that have helped get the city to work on piping in water. Now her children are starting to get involved. Her son wants to participate in the Sludge Safety Project’s march on Washington D.C. in September!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 9:25 am and is filed under Rawl, WV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.