Truthmatters
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Making Water a Matter of Race
By Claire Suddath Monday, Jul. 14, 2008Getty
To this day, Jerry Kennedy only does laundry when it rains. For the first 54 years of his life, he lived without running water, and rainstorms were the only way he could collect enough water to wash his clothes. But Kennedy isn't from some far-off rural outpost. He was born and raised in the Coal Run neighborhood of Zanesville, Ohio — a former coal-mining center of 25,000 in the eastern part of the state — just a few hundred feet from a municipal water line. Kennedy, now 58, is black. His neighbors, who did not have running water for more than 50 years, are also black. On July 10, the U.S. District Court of Ohio awarded them almost $10.9 million, ruling that they had been denied access to public water because of their race.
The decision comes four years after the water started flowing in Coal Run, a black community of some 25 homes in overwhelmingly white Muskingum County, following a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) and 67 Coal Run residents. According to the suit, the community had repeatedly requested water service since 1956, the year the city built a water main that ended just short of the neighborhood, and had watched as the East Muskingum Water Authority built new water lines and increased county water efforts in surrounding areas while their requests went unanswered. When he built his house in the early 1980s, Kennedy says, his water request was denied. He can't even remember the number of times he asked the city's service director for help, only to have nothing happen. Then a house went up next door. A white family moved in, and one day Kennedy saw his new neighbors watering their lawn. "They'd be out there with a hot tub out on the porch," he says, "and I was still going down the road [to the local water treatment plant] with a pickup truck every day." Like many Zanesville area residents, he couldn't drill a well because the surrounding coal mines have contaminated the water, rendering it undrinkable. The mines have been closed for years, but the ground is so full of sulfur that residents say the water runs red. In Coal Run, Kennedy and his black neighbors would either pay to have water hauled in from the treatment plant two miles away or catch the rainwater that ran down their gutters.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1822455,00.html
By Claire Suddath Monday, Jul. 14, 2008Getty
To this day, Jerry Kennedy only does laundry when it rains. For the first 54 years of his life, he lived without running water, and rainstorms were the only way he could collect enough water to wash his clothes. But Kennedy isn't from some far-off rural outpost. He was born and raised in the Coal Run neighborhood of Zanesville, Ohio — a former coal-mining center of 25,000 in the eastern part of the state — just a few hundred feet from a municipal water line. Kennedy, now 58, is black. His neighbors, who did not have running water for more than 50 years, are also black. On July 10, the U.S. District Court of Ohio awarded them almost $10.9 million, ruling that they had been denied access to public water because of their race.
The decision comes four years after the water started flowing in Coal Run, a black community of some 25 homes in overwhelmingly white Muskingum County, following a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) and 67 Coal Run residents. According to the suit, the community had repeatedly requested water service since 1956, the year the city built a water main that ended just short of the neighborhood, and had watched as the East Muskingum Water Authority built new water lines and increased county water efforts in surrounding areas while their requests went unanswered. When he built his house in the early 1980s, Kennedy says, his water request was denied. He can't even remember the number of times he asked the city's service director for help, only to have nothing happen. Then a house went up next door. A white family moved in, and one day Kennedy saw his new neighbors watering their lawn. "They'd be out there with a hot tub out on the porch," he says, "and I was still going down the road [to the local water treatment plant] with a pickup truck every day." Like many Zanesville area residents, he couldn't drill a well because the surrounding coal mines have contaminated the water, rendering it undrinkable. The mines have been closed for years, but the ground is so full of sulfur that residents say the water runs red. In Coal Run, Kennedy and his black neighbors would either pay to have water hauled in from the treatment plant two miles away or catch the rainwater that ran down their gutters.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1822455,00.html
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