Lynchburg is a small town of about 300 people in Lee County, SC, situated nearly halfway between the cities of Florence and Sumter. Lynchburg has always been a small town, with a maximum population of about 600 people in the late 1990s and a slow decline thereafter. Today, the community has a town hall building and one full-time employee, a dedicated and delightful town clerk. Lynchburg has no school, no library, no police department. Main Street is lined with mostly shuttered buildings—remnants of the stores and restaurants that used to line the street. Lynchburg does, however, still have its own drinking water and wastewater facilities, which serve the town’s residents and some folks outside of the municipal boundaries for a total service population of around 300 people. The story of Lynchburg is not unlike that of small towns across the country, where the economics of providing water service has shifted water from a vessel of community opportunity to an overwhelming challenge.
We—the US Water Alliance’s Environmental Finance Center (EFC)—were connected with Lynchburg in the summer of 2022 via the UNC Environmental Finance Center in Chapel Hill, NC, and in partnership with Mississippi State University’s Water Resources Research Institute as part of a pilot project by US EPA. This pilot, the H2O Community Solutions Team, aimed to provide wrap-around assistance for communities on water and wastewater-related issues. Lynchburg was recommended to the US EPA for this pilot project by the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services to get Lynchburg back in compliance and on a long-term path to sustainability.
At the beginning of the process, we tried to soak up as much information about the town as possible to begin framing a work plan for the assistance we could provide. We started with data points taken from public data sources, financial information provided by the town, and water system information that we found in the documents provided to us by the state regulatory agencies and US EPA. This helped us start to understand and visualize the challenges that Lynchburg faces, many of which are the same challenges faced by small, rural communities across the Southeast. However, as part of the Community Solutions Team framework, we also sought to understand the community from the community’s perspective. We wanted to hear directly from the town about their challenges, their hopes, and their needs, and we wanted to build a relationship with the community so we could work together with them, rather than for them.
We visited Lynchburg first in the summer of 2022 and met with the town clerk, town council members, the mayor, and some community members. We also connected with the contract operators who run the water and wastewater systems and toured those systems to get a better understanding of the infrastructure. Upon meeting with the town clerk, council, state, and the contract operators, we quickly learned that the system is very old and in need of upgrades. Some of these needs are associated with compliance—addressing consent orders from the state Department of Environmental Services. Others are related to the quality of services provided to the residents and the number of line breaks and unexpected repair costs for the town.
Once we understood the compliance needs, we started working with a local engineer to prepare project questionnaires for the South Carolina Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds. With the influx of funding via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and South Carolina’s criteria for awarding principal forgiveness, we knew that Lynchburg could be eligible for infrastructure funding at little to no cost to the town. In tandem with the preparation of these funding applications, we began hosting regular community engagement sessions in Lynchburg at the “Center for Life,” a church-owned building that sits next to Town Hall and doubles as a community center. The first session was just about listening to the community, understanding where they get their water, their water priorities, and their water future.
In these sessions, we quickly learned two important things about Lynchburg. First, the compliance needs and aging infrastructure were not the only water challenges faced by community members. We heard about issues with discoloration of their drinking water: from time to time (and without any discernible pattern) their drinking water would be brown, staining their clothes and seeming unsuitable to drink. Second, we learned that while Main Street may be full of shuttered buildings, the Town of Lynchburg is very much alive. Over 60 people attended the first meeting, and several community members cooked a delicious meal for everyone in attendance. Everyone seemed to know each other and enjoy each other’s company. The community was strong and healthy!
Our first community listening session in Lynchburg serves as a testament to why the Alliance does community-centered technical assistance. When we asked the community members what they wanted to see in Lynchburg’s future, we were humbled by their responses. One member told the story of receiving her immunizations as a child in the town’s health center, which is now Lynchburg’s Town Hall. She recalled how everyone in the region used to come to Lynchburg to get their shots, and how she would love to see a health center in town again. In response, another community member shared that they needed a place to hold that kind of history—that she would love to see something like a library where they could keep Lynchburg’s story alive. It is often easier to steer technical assistance toward regulatory compliance goals, as it is easier to figure out the path to a new pipe than it is to work together with a community to get a library. But, if we put the needs of a community at the center of this work, we may find that the path we need to take looks a lot different than we originally thought. And that might be the most critical data we needed to know.
Since that first engagement session, the Alliance and the UNC EFC have grown even closer to the community. Engagement sessions continue to be well attended. The Alliance has since pulled in Community Engineering Corps to work on the discolored water issue, the town has been awarded both Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds to get back in compliance with the state, and conversations have started with nearby service providers to consider a long-term regional solution for Lynchburg. Additionally, with support from the US EPA and funding via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Lynchburg has been able to tell its story via a short documentary, which was screened outdoors at a local park to around 50 community members (complete with hot, fresh popcorn!) in October 2024.
Now, as 2024 closes, the work in Lynchburg is far from over. We remain in regular contact with the town, helping with short- and long-term needs as they arise. We remain fully committed to supporting the community’s vision for its water future and enabling the life of Lynchburg’s community members to be mirrored in its public spaces and on Main Street. There is more to the story in Lynchburg, and we are so grateful to be there with the community to watch it unfold.
This blog is part of our Community Water Chronicles series, where members of our Equitable Infrastructure team share the water histories of and their experiences working in the communities across the nation that are receiving technical assistance support through our National Environmental Finance Center. Learn more about our Environmental Finance Center work here.
