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Jessica Griffith, a resident of Garwood, West Virginia, holds her youngest son. She said she used the community’s water to prepare his bottle for nine months before learning the water wasn’t being treated. (Photo by Jordan Houston/News21)

GARWOOD, W.Va. – In southern West Virginia, hundreds of unqualified residents must now run their local water systems, which often draw water from abandoned mines.

As the state has lost coal-industry jobs, the miners who once ran these systems have abandoned this task to the remaining residents.

Environmental Protection Agency data shows that at least eight communities have no water operators, and residents say they face frequent outages and taps that deliver muddy water after heavy rains.

Some Wyoming and Fayette county residents said they are getting too old to continue upkeep on the systems and lack the funds to carry out proper treatment.

In Garwood, a 55-person Wyoming County town surrounded by coal mines, residents have struggled to keep their system afloat after it was deserted in 2014.

“Everybody just up and quit,” resident Jessica Griffith said. “There was no warning, no nothing. Nobody handed it over to anybody else.”

Since then, the mother of five and her neighbors have been paying to patch up leaks and fix busted pipes themselves. The community has had frequent water outages for nearly two years. Last November, Garwood went more than three weeks without water because the reserve in the mine was too low. Many residents had to shower in nearby towns, Griffith said.

Griffith said the community can’t afford to test its water, so residents have no way of knowing if it’s safe to drink.

“You don’t really know what you’ve come in contact with,” Griffith said. “Even just like animal feces, you can’t keep that from not getting in the water when it’s coming out of the ground like that.”

Garwood residents rely on bottled water donations they received from a church in Virginia. Griffith stores a large pack in her garage, which she leaves open for her neighbors. The community is down to its last row of bottles.

Two hours north, Kanawha Falls residents also face uncertainty with their drinking water. The town, known for its roaring waterfalls, has relied on volunteers to run the community water system for as long as anyone can remember, residents said.

Bobby Kirby, 80, has helped out as the system’s treasurer for more than a decade. He said he collects money from residents to pay for chlorine to dump into the storage tank, which sits half a mile up on a mountain that houses an abandoned coal mine. However, Kirby said he hasn’t tested or treated the water in years.

“We just don’t have the money to do it,” Kirby said. “It just got too expensive. Nobody was paying the bill to do it, so we just quit it.”

Kanawha Falls, West Virginia, resident Joe Underwood, who recently recovered form skull surgery, said he’s too afraid to drink his own water. His doctor told him not to drink or bathe in the town water to avoid infection from contamination. (Photo by Jordan Houston/News21)

Resident Joe Underwood, who recently had skull surgery after a four-wheeler accident, said he won’t drink or bathe in the town’s water. He said doctors told him the water gave him two infections near his brain following his surgery. Underwood said he now only drinks bottled water and showers with a cap.

“I just finally realized the importance of the type of water that’s coming in,” Underwood said. “I’m meaning that for people that have serious injuries. I’m meaning that for little babies. I’m meaning that for anybody that has any kind of health problems.”

According to EPA data, a number of other communities in the southern part of the state struggle with similar problems. The state’s Office of Environmental Health has placed many of these communities on boiled water advisories.

The West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council, the agency responsible for improving infrastructure across the state, announced projects to link Kanawha Falls and Garwood to surrounding city water systems.

However, Susan Small from the Public Service Commission, which oversees economic regulation for the state’s public utilities, said these types of projects are expensive.

“If money wasn’t an issue, we could extend water systems everywhere,” Small said. “But the topography in the mountainous terrain of West Virginia makes extending a mile of water line much more expensive than, say, Ohio.”

Officials expect to connect Kanawha Falls – a project that cost $1.8 million – by the end of the summer. Garwood will receive funding if the council has leftover money from another waterline extension project in a neighboring town, officials said.

Griffith said she has doubts Garwood will be hooked up to city water any time soon.

“We should be able to turn on the faucet and there’s water and not have to go day-by-day wondering if I’m going to have water today or if I’m going to have to drive down the road and give my kids a bath.”

Kanawha Falls, home to 55 residents, dates back to the Civil War. Union soldiers occupied the West Virginia town during the war and handed the water system over to residents after it ended. (Photo by Jordan Houston/News21)

To see the full News21 report on “Troubled Water,” go to troubledwater.news21.com on Aug. 14.

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Bottled water piles up in the home of Texas resident Leroy Thomas, who has long relied on bottled water. (Photo by Brandon Kitchin/News21)

PHOENIX – When Bonnie Sicard of Beebe Plain, Vermont, started receiving notices about arsenic in her drinking water more than than five years ago, she wasn’t going to risk poisoning her family. She went straight to bottled water.

“I got seven grandsons,” she said. “When they used to come over when they were little, we didn’t let them drink the water.”

Maine officials often recommend bottled water when they find traces of arsenic because it’s less expensive than water treatment options.

However, the cost adds up over time. Sicard spends about $20 a week, she said.

Bottled water has become the No. 1 beverage choice in the U.S., with 12.8 billion gallons sold in 2016, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation. Wholesale sales totalled $16 billion last year.

But bottled water can come from many sources, but most of it is either spring water or purified tap water.

Bonnie Sicard of Beebe Plain, Vermont, holds up a boil water advisory. She drinks bottled water. (Photo by Fionnuala O’Leary/News21)

About 45 percent of bottled water, including leading brands Dasani and Aquafina, comes from public tap water that is treated before being bottled, according to the companies’ websites and California-based scientist Peter Gleick, who wrote the book “Bottled and Sold.”

Arizona State University professor of practice Elisabeth Graffy, who used to work at the U.S. Geological Survey, said consumers shouldn’t assume any bottled water is completely safe.

“You should be able to trust tap water more than bottled water,” Graffy said. “Bottled water is actually not regulated the same as tap water.”

The Environmental Protection Agency monitors public water supplies, and it makes violations available to the public. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration monitors bottled water.

While there are some similar regulations, according to a 2010 analysis by the nonprofit EWG, 18 percent of bottled water brands do not provide customers with the source of the water, and 32 percent do not give any information about how the brands test the water.

A 2008 study by the same group found 38 pollutants – from industrial chemicals to bacteria – in 10 brands of bottled water.

However, Graffy said consumers must make the choice.

“There are concerns when you’re talking about the implications of people relying on bottled water,” Graffy said. “But then, you compare that to the concern of water that you know is contaminated … that may be a risk that is fine.”

To see the full News21 report on “Troubled Water,” go to troubledwater.news21.com on Aug. 14.

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