West Virginia lawmakers just voted to increase pollution in the state's waterways. By contrast, the New Deal provided West Virginians with clean drinking water.

Above: The New Deal had thousands of projects to improve America's drinking water. Here is a map showing waterworks projects of the Public Works Administration (PWA), 1933-1939. From America Builds: The Record of PWA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939.

Above: Here is a close-up of the West Virginia portion of the previous map, showing 49 PWA drinking water improvement projects. In addition to the PWA's projects, other New Deal programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), improved West Virginia's drinking water infrastructure, for example, by installing water mains. And the WPA helped clean West Virginia's waterways by sealing old mines. Also, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) improved West Virginia's waterways by, among other things, planting over 26 million trees (see "Why we’re obsessed with nature’s water TREEtment plants. From roots to stem, clean water is not possible without healthy trees." Potomac Conservancy, March 8, 2022).

Above: This newspaper article details how PWA waterworks allowed the town of Ripley, West Virginia to remove its "unsafe drinking water" signs. It also lists some of the other West Virginia towns receiving New Deal drinking water assistance. From The Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston, West Virginia), April 7, 1935, and newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: In its 2020 infrastructure report card for West Virginia, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the state's drinking water a "D" letter grade, and also noted that about a quarter-of-a-million West Virginians drink water that is out of compliance with the nation's Safe Drinking Water Act. This squares with a 2019 study by three environmental groups, finding that 36 of West Virginia's 55 counties have some of the worst drinking water in the nation ("Study Finds West Virginia Counties Among ‘Worst in Nation’ For Drinking Water Violations," West Virginia Public Broadcasting, September 25, 2019). Image above from the ASCE, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

The West Virginia House of Delegates Just Voted to Make Bad Drinking Water Even Worse

Against a backdrop of bad drinking water sources & infrastructure, the West Virginia House of Delegates recently voted "yes" on an industry-backed bill to increase water pollution... by, essentially, playing games with "drinking water designation" (see, e.g., "WV House overwhelmingly OKs industry-backed measure to allow increased water pollution," Coal Valley News (Danville, West Virginia), March 13, 2025). 

And so, this is the inevitable result of (a) Democrats abandoning the New Deal in favor of hyper-identity politics (alienating much of rural America), (b) Republicans favoring the moneyed-few over the public's health & safety, and (c) voters being marinated in right-wing disinformation for decades. 

A + B + C = brown drinking water... with toxic chemicals added for flavor. Yum.