The More Things Change...

11 July 2008

$11M Awarded to Black Residents Denied Water Service for Decades

At the same time the nation is prepared to nominate its first black major presidential candidate, another more basic "change" comes to one predominately black Ohio neighborhood: Running water.

A federal jury awards nearly $11 million to residents of the mostly black, rural Coal Run neighborhood, about 5 miles east of Zanesville in Muskingum County, after finding "local authorities denied them public water service for decades out of racial discrimination. ... The money covers both monetary losses and the residents' pain and suffering between 1956, when water lines were first laid in the area, and 2003, when Coal Run got public water."

The suit was filed in 2003 after the Ohio Civil Rights Commission ruled the Coal Run residents were victims of systemic discrimination and had been denied water service for decades. In contrast, just yards up the hill, which is almost all white, wealthier residents enjoyed water service for years. The mostly black and Native American residents in the tiny Coal Run "hollow on the edge of town lived a bit like frontiersmen, keeping drinking water in jugs, collecting rainwater in barrels, even occasionally melting snow from their yards, all because they did not have city water service."

"The water stopped where the black folks started," Saundra McCuen told the New York Times in 2004. "I don't want to use the race thing, but what else could it be?"

Another plaintiff, Frederick Martin, "grew up with nine siblings and shared two tubs of water between them on bath nights when he was growing up. He left Coal Run, built on a former coal mine, in 1970 so his children wouldn't have to endure the same living conditions. 'Today I feel that we are really blessed, to know and to see justice being met,' Martin said. 'And to see, regardless of who we are, there. "

Jury: Black neighborhood was denied water service [AP]
Ohio Town's Water at Last Runs Past a Color Line [NYT]

Posted by Rod at 13:32 in Current Affairs, Health, New York Times, Ohio, Politics | Permalink
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