A rural county in south-central Kentucky is moving forward with plans to revamp its drinking water infrastructure. Edmonson County has allocated millions of dollars to address what the district manager describes as years of lapsed maintenance that have caused an erosion in public trust.
The Edmonson County Water District has secured more than $29 million to replace and upgrade its aging water system.
Last updated in 2000, the water district’s system has been plagued by unreliable water access, concerns about water quality, and an eroding sense of public trust in the district. Since taking control of the operation in 2024, district manager Kevin Shaw said the district’s priorities have shifted from a reactive approach to proactive measures to ensure lasting reliability.
“These guys over here have prided themself on keeping good rates and making sure they always had money in the bank, and I applaud that. But to get to that point, they’d just allowed maintenance to lapse. When you’re reactive on maintenance, in our business, it’s too late,” Shaw said.
The “new” Edmonson County Water District
When Shaw began, the district operated two water treatment plants; the Brownsville Water Treatment plant, which provides water to Edmonson County, and the Wax water treatment plant, which served parts of Edmonson, Hart, and Grayson counties. Shaw said at that time, the Brownsville plant served roughly 60 percent of the district’s customers, and the Wax plant served the other 40 percent. He said the vast majority of the district’s water problems were caused by complications at the Wax plant.
“Those troubles, and I couldn’t be more truthful in saying this, they had nothing to do with water quality. The quality of the water didn’t change, what had changed was the water level of the river and it got a little harder to get that water into the intake structure. But if you’re doing your work at the water treatment center, that’s not an issue,” Shaw said.
However, Shaw said those problems led to public distrust regarding water quality and system resilience.
“We refer to the Edmonson County Water District now as the ‘New’ Edmonson County Water District. With that said, has the community embraced that yet? Not yet, but they will. They were provided less than desirable service for several years, and I will never tell anybody that that’s not true,” Shaw said.
To consolidate resources and streamline the upgrade process for the aging system, the district sold the assets to the Wax treatment facility. In August, 2025, the customers served by the district in Hart County were sold to the Green River Valley water district, Grayson County customer accounts were sold to their county water district, and the Warren County Water District began supplying 1 million gallons of water per day to the Edmonson County system to make up for any losses.
Shaw said that without the added complications of the Wax treatment center, the district is better able to allocate resources to the Brownsville treatment facility.
“After we handed off those areas that were complicated for us to serve, it made the Edmonson County plant at Brownsville a plant that we could go back and update and adequately serve all of the customers of Edmonson County without having to build a brand new treatment facility,” Shaw said.
In 2024, the district received $6.5 million in state funding to install new water lines, bolster their pumping station, and complete upgrades to the Green River water intake if federal funds become available.
Last week, that federal funding was secured. The district received $14 million for system upgrades as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, and an additional $9.26 million to modernize the treatment plant.
Shaw said phase one of the modernization project will get the Brownsville plant up to date on current equipment regulations, and will take up roughly $14 million of the funding. Construction on phase one of the project is expected to begin in 2027, with phase two beginning immediately after.
“Phase two will get us up to date on the proposed regulations that are out there. In this industry we always have proposed regulations, we get lots of time to meet them, they talk about them for a dozen years before you have to adhere to them, and you have lots of time to put them in place if you’re proactive,” Shaw said.
Shaw expects the district to have a state-of-the-art water treatment facility in place by 2030.
