4 years ago
It's a small and tidy home tucked between the Blue Ridge Mountians and some of the largest multi-million dollar estates in Loudoun County.
Yet there?s an 83-year-old Loudoun County native who has lived here her entire life and has never had indoor plumbing. There have been promises, but four years after the fact, hope has faded.
Says Hattie Reid: "They don't want to come out here if someone ain't got no money. Where the money coming from? We ain't got no money."
But just a few miles to the east of Ms. Reid's home is the small village of Willsville where an eight-year-old promise has returned.
Says Lottie Smith, "The first thing I'm going to do is sit back and take me a nice hot bubble bath, lock the door. I'll probably get lost in there."
Permits have been hung by the dirt road and outside each home where water may soon flow for the very first time.
Loudoun County officials concede costs have been the issue. Too much money for the number of people affected.
Willisville was founded shortly after the Civil War when freed slave Heuson Willis bought a house for $100 dollars along a dirt road. Soon more black families followed, snatching up land that future generations would discover doesn't perc, meaning the rock filled ground provides no safe place for water to go when it's flushed down the toilet.
For those who have been fighting this fight for decades, it's hard to ignore that in this case the haves are white and have-nots are black.
But now comes another promise, the water will be here by December. The townspeople can only hope with another winter quickly approaching.
Says Lottie Smith-Payne, "when it's cold, it's like coat, hat, socks and shoes and a mad sprint."
The Willisville sewage plant comes at a cost of $600,000 dollars. The same system would have cost Loudoun County just a thrid of that if they fulfilled their first promise 8 years ago. As for Ms. Reid and the other houses in her town, there's no saying when they will see indoor water.
