Lee County Local Speaks to LPM Investigates About Rural Drinking Water and Senate Bill 89

For more than 30 years, Montana Hobbs’ family farm in Lee County has relied on water that flows up from underground, feeding five natural springs on their land.

“City water doesn't reach my parents’ property, and I highly doubt that it ever will,” Hobbs said. “We live pretty far out in the county.”

Her father set up a pump house and a nearly mile-long water line that runs from one of the springs down to their home. It supplies water for drinking, livestock, irrigation – whatever they need. Hobbs swings by often to fill up jugs of drinking water for her own home.

“We have had reliable water for a long time. I mean, truly, the only thing that we have to worry about is really cold temperatures,” she said. “He has it set up really well.”

But Hobbs is worried about a new potential threat to their water supply: Senate Bill n89. The legislation would largely, if not entirely, stop the state government from regulating pollution in groundwater, which fills their farm’s springs and provides drinking water for many other Kentuckians.

The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed state and federal data, interviewed environmental advocates and groundwater experts and found rural reaches of the state, especially, will be at higher risk of pollution if SB 89 becomes law. The 31,000 domestic use wells that pull water from the ground are particularly concentrated in eastern and western Kentucky.

And the public water systems that rely on groundwater serve residents predominately in small communities along the Ohio River and across the Jackson Purchase in deep western Kentucky.

These well and water systems would be compromised if SB 89 becomes law, said Rebecca Goodman, the secretary of the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, in a letter last month to Republican Rep. Jim Gooch from Providence.

“Water is a valuable resource to Kentuckians. Degrading the commonwealth’s waters to the point that water quality is decreased, while costs increase, will negatively affect economic development opportunities for Kentucky,” Goodman wrote.

The Republican-run Kentucky Senate passed SB 89 last month, sending it to the GOP-dominated state House of Representatives for consideration. Gooch leads the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, where SB 89 is headed next for debate.

Since 1973, Kentucky law has defined “waters of the commonwealth” – which are afforded protections against pollution – to include pretty much all aboveground and belowground bodies of water. SB 89 would change that definition, reducing state oversight of pollution so that it only applies to what the federal government classifies as “navigable waters.”

Environmental advocates say that change would open the door for the unlimited release of contaminants into groundwater as well as some surface waters, like headwater streams.

Kentuckians could be left with a public health crisis, said Michael Washburn, executive director of Kentucky Waterways Alliance, a Louisville-based nonprofit focused on protecting the state’s 90,000 miles of lakes, streams and rivers.

“There are more than a million Kentuckians that receive their drinking water directly from groundwater sources,” Washburn said.

The bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Sen. Scott Madon from Pineville, did not respond to a request for an interview. When the Senate debated SB 89, he said the bill would tackle “unnecessary red tape” that hurts coal companies and the communities that rely on them economically.

“As I always say when I'm talking about coal, God put coal under our feet so that we can use it,” Madon said. “It's one of the greatest natural resources, and it's our job to push back on unelected bureaucrats that overstep and safeguard our constituents from government overreach.”

He and a few other Republican lawmakers claimed delays on permits have been a problem for businesses under Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration, and they said the bill would help the coal, construction and agriculture industries.

“The way it stands now, the heavy hand of government can roll into your farm (or) roll into your construction site at any time and write you up because something went into that puddle or ditch on that site,” said Sen. Stephen West of Paris. “The Clean Water Act was never meant to cover that sort of thing.”

To Hobbs, who grew up drinking Lee County spring water without much worry about pollution, the threat SB 89 poses is so great it led her for the first time to call one of her legislators to voice concerns.

“We survive on water. It's incredibly important,” she said. “I think everyone, on all spectrums of political affiliations, wants clean drinking water — wants safe water.”

Pollution already exists

Even with virtually all Kentucky waters getting some protection under state law right now, pollution still happens.

But there are limits, albeit imperfect ones, on what companies are allowed to dump into public waters under the current rules, said Lesley Sneed, an environmental permitting specialist for the Kentucky Resources Council, a longstanding environmental advocacy group.

The U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory offers an incomplete snapshot of chemical pollution of waterways. The EPA tracks air, water and land emissions of more than 800 toxic chemicals coming from over 20,000 facilities nationwide.

The data offers a “starting point for evaluating potential exposures to certain chemicals and associated risks to human health or the environment,” the agency’s website says. Most of the reported chemical releases were permitted under regulations meant to minimize the potential dangers.

KyCIR used the latest publicly available data, which is for the year 2023, to map where facilities reported releasing toxic chemicals directly into Kentucky waters, as well as what the most-released chemicals were.

Meanwhile, a 2024 report from the state environment cabinet says 2,071 rivers and streams, 72 lakes and reservoirs and 11 springs are impaired for at least one designated use, such as human recreation or local fish consumption.


More pollution, more costs

If the Kentucky Legislature decides to drop anti-pollution restrictions for groundwater, experts say it will make it even more important for well owners to monitor their personal water supply.

Neither the state nor the EPA regulates private wells’ water quality.

The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet advises homeowners who use a well for drinking water to test their water annually for various contaminants, such as bacteria and nitrates.

But plenty of well owners don’t do regular testing, said Sneed, of the Kentucky Resources Council.

“They just drink it,”she said. “And testing’s not inexpensive, even on an individual level.”

The state environment cabinet also recommends well owners seek out information on potential sources of contamination located near their well.

A cabinet spokesperson said in an email that the agency’s goal will “always be the protection and safety of our drinking water sources for Kentucky families.”

The cabinet currently has a monitoring network that samples groundwater sources across the state, including springs and private wells, and analyzes the water for metals, pesticides and other contents. The team may take samples when investigating citizen complaints.

Hydrogeologist Sara Evans worked for the state division of water in the 1990s, helping develop protections for groundwater. She told KyCIR much of the state’s geology consists of karst regions, which feature sinkholes, caves and other gaps in the rock. She said groundwater flows fast, almost like an underground river, through those areas.

“There’s not a lot that impedes that flow of water and contamination in the water,” she said. This makes drinking water supplies that draw from such groundwater more vulnerable to pollution. She noted that in karst areas, people usually pull groundwater from springs rather than wells.

Cleaning up the pollution on the back end can be challenging — especially for groundwater, since it flows below the surface, Evans said.

“Tracking the flow of those contaminants when it’s underground is incredibly difficult,” she said.

Public water systems generally have to treat their supply to ensure it’s safe to consume. The Energy and Environment Cabinet, as well as Kentucky environmental groups, say some systems’ treatment expenses could go up if their water sources lose state protections under SB 89 and subsequently become more polluted. They could, in turn, bill their customers more.

That possibility concerns Campton Mayor Kathi May. She said the city government she leads is in charge of the system that supplies water to about 2,500 customers in Wolfe County.

“The cost of the chemicals to treat the water have basically increased three times what they were, say, a year ago. You know, the cost of everything has increased,” she told KyCIR in a phone interview. “And if we had to do more testing or more treating, then obviously that's going to be a much-added expense to our system.”

The local system’s primary source of water is Wolfe Lake. They’re permitted to pull about 500,000 gallons per day from it, May said. But the lake ran critically low during a drought last year, so they brought a local well back online. They withdraw about 100,000 gallons of groundwater per day from it.

She said the well also helps them manage the increased demand for water caused by local tourism. Wolfe County is home to the popular Red River Gorge.

Sneed said even public water systems that rely on surface-level, rather than underground, sources likely will have a harder time ensuring the safety of their supply if the state drastically reduces its regulation of pollution.

“It’s going to have to have more chemicals, more filtering, to produce our drinking water. And ultimately that cost, it’s going to be absorbed by the ratepayers,” she said. “There’s so many different industries and so many waste streams. It’s mind-boggling, the amount of things they may have to deal with.”

By:  Morgan Watkins - LPM Investigates