FOR A RECENTLY PLUMBED NEIGHBORHOOD, VALIDATION IS A VERDICT
Kirk Irwin for The New York Times
Rodney and Doretta Hale have lived in Coal Run, near Zanesville, Ohio, for more than 50 years, most of that time without access to running water.
ZANESVILLE, Ohio — The sound of rainfall at night still startles Jerry Kennedy, who jumps out of bed, ready to run outside and catch the precious drops.
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Kirk Kerwin for The New York Times
Jerry Kennedy works a cistern pump at the house he grew up in near Zanesville. Until 2004, the city water supply did not reach Mr. Kennedy’s home in Coal Run, a mostly black neighborhood outside town.
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Kirk Irwin for The New York Times
An old outhouse.
“And then I realize, ‘Hey, you don’t have to haul water anymore,’ ” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s right there in the faucet.”
Until 2004, the city’s water pipes did not stretch all the way to Mr. Kennedy’s home on Coal Run Road, a mostly black neighborhood in a hollow beyond the edge of town. As some people here put it, the water seemed to stop “where the black folks started.”
A federal jury in Columbus agreed last month. The jury, citing a violation of civil rights law, ordered the City of Zanesville and Muskingum County to pay nearly $11 million in damages for failing to provide water to each of 67 plaintiffs, including Mr. Kennedy, for over 45 years. The plaintiffs will be eligible for payments of $15,000 to $300,000. The city and county, whose officials deny any racial discrimination, are appealing the ruling.
Like a lot of people in the neighborhood, Doretta Hale, 74, wept on the day the clean water first gushed through the pipes. “I could wash clothes whenever I wanted,” she said, as she sat on her tiny front porch. “I could go out and water the flowers.”
Ms. Hale and her husband, Rodney, had used an electric pump to bring water from a cistern in the front yard. But the water was fouled with crawfish, snakes and rats. The residue from old coal deposits, meanwhile, sometimes could leave the water as red as blood.
Others put buckets on the roof to collect raindrops, and gathered snow in the winter. Water was so scarce that children learned early that it was bad manners to ask for a drink in a neighbor’s home.
“They might not have any,” said Cindy Hairston, a 47-year-old nurse, “and you didn’t want to embarrass them.”
Zanesville, mostly distinctive for its Y-shaped bridge, where the Licking River meets the Muskingum, has lost much of its industrial base over the years. A century and more ago, it was a destination for West Virginians looking for work after coal mines there closed.
The case goes back to 1956, when a now-defunct water board did not extend service to parts of Coal Run Road. In 2002, about two dozen black residents of the hollow filed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, saying they had been denied service because of race. The next year, the commission found “probable cause” of discrimination. A month after that, Muskingum County officials announced they would extend water to Coal Run.
After construction began to extend the water lines, the residents filed suit. The judgment represents damages from the denial of city water from 1956 to 2004.
Contending that race had nothing to do with water policy, Mark Landes, a county lawyer, said the real issue was geography.
“There is a reason it’s called city water,” he said. “It is water that is supplied to people who live within the city.”
The hollow, he noted, is about five miles beyond the city limit. And he estimated that perhaps 30 percent of county residents did without city water, “and almost all of them are white.”
Mr. Landes characterized the plaintiffs’ legal team as “out-of-town lawyers” who saw the chance of reaping huge legal fees.
Reed Colfax, a member of the Washington legal team, Relman and Dane, noted that the jury found evidence of racial discrimination, adding it would be difficult to overlook racism in a case where city water was extended “to the last white house.”
Moreover, he said, the state attorney general, Nancy Rogers, supported the suit and praised the judgment.
Mr. Colfax said the legal fees would probably run into millions of dollars but would need court approval.
The size of the judgment has provoked grumbling in the stores, gas stations and coffee shops of Zanesville.
Mayor Bud Zwelling, 71, a former judge, said he was “shocked” by the verdict and predicted it had “no chance of standing up to appeal.”
Ms. Hairston worried about a backlash. “I was at the Wal-Mart the other day,” she said, “and somebody I know said, ‘Well, I don’t know if I should even talk to you.’ ”
Her father, Rodney Hale, a 74-year-old blacktop hauler, said it struck him as odd that whites would grouse about the judgment. He said no one seemed bothered when blacks were limited to the balcony at the Liberty Theater or were barred from eating at the counter of a local restaurant.
Mr. Hale said he recalled when, as a seventh grader, he was told to get off the school bus and walk, simply because he was black.
“The bus driver explained it was school board policy,” said Mr. Hale, as he sat on his porch and gazed at the hillside covered with ragweed and soaring sycamore trees. “People always have some explanation. But it just seems to me they just don’t like people who look like me.”
SOURCE: The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com
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Past Coverage
- How Drought Just Might Bring Water to the Navajo (July 23, 2004)
- After Reconciliation, Steering South Africa to a Reckoning (April 27, 2004)
- Ohio Town’s Water at Last Runs Past a Color Line (February 17, 2004)
Ann
