For residents dealing with a lack of safe drinking water, daily living must be organized around meeting household water needs – whether buying waterby the gallon at a grocery store, hauling it in large quantities on a truck, or traveling long distances to wash clothes at a laundromat.
Access to safe drinking water is a blessing we all expect and need. Today, more than 5,000 households in the Counties of Lee, Scott, Wise, Dickenson, Russell, Buchanan, Tazewell and the City of Norton have gained access to a safe drinking water supply because of grants awarded by the Coalfield Water Development Fund (CWDF), a non-profit organization providing grants for drinking water project construction. As a result of CWDF grants, fewer households depend on wells, springs, cisterns and unapproved water supplies. The dramatic expansion of public water access is due to many decades of cooperative effort by state and federal legislators, local governments, government agencies, private foundations, Planning District Commissions, and non-profit organizations.
Between 1996-2024, the CWDF awarded $11.5 million in grants to support construction of 137 drinking water projects
Most of the grants awarded by the CWDF originated from earnings from its one-of-a-kind endowments established with state and federal funding. In the future, the Foundation for Appalachian Virginia will administer the CWDF endowments and continue to award drinking water construction grants to benefit the jurisdictions originally authorized to receive CWDF funding.