Presbyterians Install Clean Water Systems
For Tennessee Mountain Community

by Jane Hines

“It was like a storm cloud got hung on top of the mountain,” said Fred Kinsey. He is remembering that day three years ago when Upper Paint Creek, normally a quiet pretty little stream, became a big dangerous river swollen with muddy flood water. Fred continues: "It rained five inches an hour for five hours. People a hundred years old don't remember it ever raining like that before. They call it the 500-year flood."

As Upper Paint Creek went roaring down past Viking Mountain Road that day, it picked up big boulders and bridges and even a whole house with the people still in it.

One of the residual effects of the flood was bad pollution of the water in the wells used by the families living on Viking Mountain Road. Having no access to a municipal water system, they had to buy bottled water for all their drinking and cooking. The water in their wells was brown and smelled bad and when tested was worse than it looked.

Fred Kinsey, a member of Cedar Creek Presbyterian Church, talked to his pastor, Harrell Cobb about the problem. Harrell remembered reading about the Living Waters for the World project of the Synod and he contacted Holston Presbytery Executive Rich Fifield, who contacted Tom Carroll, Holston's commissioner to the Synod, who is on the LWW committee. Tom Carroll contacted Wil Howie, LWW coordinator, who contacted Jack Wendleton, a long-time volunteer engineer with the project.

Previously the 14 water purification systems installed by LWW had all been community systems in third world countries, using a central water supply and central distribution point. What was needed on Viking Mountain was a system that could be installed near the wells at individual homes. Wendleton, an experienced water quality engineer, designed a system to meet their needs, after it was determined in community meetings that the people wanted it and that the presbytery and the church would support it. Today about half of the people on Viking Mountain Road have received a system and others are on the waiting list. It works. The water now tests pure and the systems are maintained by the families with help where it is needed from the church and the presbytery.

What has happened since the flood is a good illustration of the value of the old Presbyterian connectional system. The partnership of the Cedar Creek congregation with the Viking Mountain community and the Holston Presbytery Ethical Issues and Human Needs committee and the Living Waters for the World committee of the Synod is a textbook example of cooperation and sharing.

Tom Carroll, an elder at Reedy Creek Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, says it's an opportunity to show the community that clean water for the body can be accompanied by Living Water for the Soul. The community in turn is grateful to Tom Carroll and the other Presbyterians for living up to what they had already been saying since the first school teachers came to the Appalachian region a century ago: "You can trust the Presbyterians."