FORT GAY, W.Va. — Information may be the only thing harder to come by around here than clean water.

        Water suddenly became a scarce commodity Oct. 11, when the bottom fell out of a 70-acre coal mine waste pond near Inez, Ky. The failure sent 250 million gallons of sludge laced with arsenic, mercury and lead into tributaries of the Tug Fork, the source of most public water supplies in this area.

        While coal company employees scrambled to lay water lines to tap other sources, many rural residents who rely on private wells were left in the dark about the effects of the spill.

        "They haven't said word one to us, and it scares me to death,” said Edna Evans, who lives on the other side of the mountain from Martin County Coal Co.'s Wolf Creek preparation plant, site of the spill.

        "I don't know what's going to come out of that mountain,” Ms. Evans said. "They use all kinds of chemicals to treat that coal.”

        The mountainous terrain, laced by hundreds of miles of abandoned mine tunnels, makes it difficult to determine how and where groundwater flows.

        Several days after the spill, a hydrologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said traces of the coal sludge had turned up on the Levisa Fork, upstream of the Tug Fork. The streams meet at Fort Gay.

        "It appears to be coming through the rock,” said the EPA's Fred Stroud.

        But that kind of information has been scarce for residents, despite public information sessions at schools and community centers.

        Garry R. Lafferty, deputy judge-executive in Martin County, said officials have made no coordinated attempt to contact those with private wells.

        About a third of Martin County residents still rely on private wells and springs for their water.

        “For the past week, we have been handing out water to every citizen in the county, six gallons per household,” he said. “It's an emergency supply, drinking water for a couple of days in case the temporary water line goes down.”

        Across the river in Fort Gay, an 18-wheel tanker loaded with water sits beside a closed down car wash.

        Outside the town hall, a temporary water line — a huge blue pipe — snakes along the river bank. Booms and nets are laid across the stream in an attempt to slow down the flow of the sludge.

        The same pipe runs up Coldwater Creek outside Inez, the stream hardest hit by the spill. The entire creek bed, up to 5 and 10 feet above the water level, is covered with the black, tar-like substance.

        Among the neat brick homes, gardens and swimming pools of Coldwater Creek, coal company employees work on hastily constructed containment areas to hold the sludge pumped out of the creek.

        The next hollow over, Wolf Creek, is a world apart from Coldwater Creek, although it is no less affected by the spill.

        The hills surrounding Wolf Creek are steeper and the valley narrower than on Coldwater Creek, with little room for gardens and none at all for swimming pools. Instead of brick ranch houses, people here live in trailers and the remains of coal company towns built in the 1940s and 1950s.

        Municipal water has not yet made it all the way up Wolf Creek, and there are no blue temporary pipelines going to these homes.

        Lafferty, the Martin County deputy judge-executive, said it his the goal of his administration to bring public water to all of Martin County in the next two years, when their administration ends.

        “Before we leave office, we're going to make sure the entire county has municipal water,” Lafferty said. “We have two years left.”

        One hope for that is construction of a new federal prison near Inez. Water and sewer service for the prison will be extended to local residents as well, said Niles Cumbo, superintendent of the Martin County water supply.

        “That should help us cover about 90 percent of the county,” he said.

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