Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXXIII): Local governments struggling to pay for water systems

Kevin Griffin reports from Tyrell County, North Carolina, population 4,407.  This spring, Tyrrell County, with the smallest population in the state, came within 24 hours of defaulting on a bond issued to build one of its water plants.

The state stepped in and helped make the payment, but county leaders don’t know how they will make the next one. The county’s biggest water customer, a state prison, closed last fall.

Tyrrell County is one of dozens of small, rural governments managing utility systems teetering on bankruptcy. The cost of running an aging water system or paying vendors for needed electricity often outstrips the shrinking communities’ ability to pay.

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed some to the brink. Thousands of customers haven’t settled their bills — taking advantage of a four-month reprieve, extended by the governor, forbidding utility providers from shutting off service. Closed businesses, another casualty of the pandemic, also strained the systems.

Griffin quotes Scott Mooneyham of the North Carolina League of Municipalities: 

This crisis, this pandemic, has created its own set of problems but basically it's layered those problems on top of some already existing problems for a number of small, rural municipal systems out there. They’ve become overwhelming in some places.

All makes me wonder how the East Newton County Water District, in my home county in Arkansas, is faring.  That district began operating less than two decades ago. 
Griffin works for the Hickory Daily Record, and this story was apparently picked up the Greensboro, North Carolina newspaper.  It came across my radar screen because it was featured in a Pulitzer Center e-newsletter.