Actions of the Water Authority Board of Directors and Why I Hold Them Responsible

Actions of the Water Authority Board of Directors and Why I Hold Them Responsible

Try to imagine how much it infuriates me to see the “men” on the Heard Water Authority Board of Directors go on with their lives, getting to enjoy peace and quiet in their homes while they are destroying mine and ruining my life!
I want to stress that the unforgivable way I have been treated and the way this matter has been handled was clearly the policy established by the Water Authority Board of Directors, since it began literally on the very first day I contacted the Water Authority about this problem. They cannot pass the buck onto Director Jimmy Knight, who was hired several months later, even though Knight has been an active participant in ruining my life while quoting scripture in the local papers. And keep in mind that the previous Director (Terry Davis) resigned immediately on the very day I first notified the Water Authority of this problem.

When this nightmare first began, I was told that Alvin Ginn is supposed to be the Water Authority Board member who represents those of us living on the west side of Heard County. When I called Ginn in June 2006 to make him aware of the problems that had just arisen at my place, he was friendly and kept telling me over and over how “sorry” he was that this was happening to me. But to my amazement, he was unwilling to investigate the matter, bring it up at the next Board of Directors meeting, or even drive the two miles from his home to mine to witness what was occurring, as I definitely asked him to do.  A few days later, on the afternoon of June 24, 2006, a severe thunderstorm struck the area, dumping about three inches of rain in less than an hour. I will never forget riding out that storm in my house, so worried about something else that I was almost oblivious to the fact dangerous weather was even occurring.  My house felt as if it was being crushed—an occurrence I have had to endure many, many more times over the course of these horrible years. A sustained lateral force of unbelievable strength had built up against the front-facing foundation wall of my house and was pushing against the house from front to back. I could hear and see sheetrock cracking in several rooms, and hear the house cracking and giving throughout. Like so many other occasions, water was literally being pushed out past the washers of my tightly turned-off showers and faucets and they were dribbling a steady flow from the extreme pressure coming in off of the water main. (And yes, there was always a pressure reducer installed, but it was USELESS against that! I long ago lost count of how many pressure reducers had to be replaced in the years since this began.) A few days before, on the evening of June 21st, massive shock waves and heaves of thrust had struck my house from the water main trench and cracked the very thick, strong rear foundation wall in at least three places. The strongest of these was a tremendous lateral thrust against my foundation, which pushed the house from front to back and literally pushed me forward in the chair I was seated in. The sheetrock wall right in front of me had cracked vertically from the ceiling down, in an instant. I heard what absolutely sounded like the crack of a rifle shot at the rear of my house. When I ran outdoors and started surveying the damage, I had discovered that sound had come from one rather significant crack in my hefty stone foundation which extended all the way from the top, down to the ground.

With such a downpour occurring on this afternoon of June 24th that my yard resembled a lake, and a sustained force pushing against the front foundation of my house so strongly that I was being pushed forward in my chair and my computer monitor was rocking; I feared that my rear foundation wall would not hold in the over-saturated soil. For an awful hour that seemed like an eternity, my alarm grew as the rain continued to pour and the force continued to build. Twice during that hour, I called Alvin Ginn’s home number because this was the perfect opportunity for him to witness the amazing problems impacting my home. No one answered, so I finally left a polite, civil message describing my situation. I remember practically pleading for him to contact somebody and get them to check the pumping station or come out to my place to witness this immediately. To this day, he has never returned my call, though strangely, everything came to a sudden halt not long after I left that message. But within a few days, I was right back having similar episodes again, though not that severe. (But over the next few years, there would be several identical episodes which were even worse and more terrifying)   Many times over these past six and a half hellish years I’ve wondered what kind of man could just sit back in the comfort of his own home and ignore my pleas for help--never even returning such a distressed call--and then go on with his life for all this time like nothing ever happened, while my home is being torn apart.

And here is something else about these “men” which I would love for the entire world to know. Way back in 2006 at the beginning of this nightmare, I had the plumbing underneath my house inspected and my septic tank pumped, just because I knew there would be attempts to pass the buck and place blame there. (Especially after I encountered the Water Authority’s fishy tactics and bizarre attitude problems towards me.) Well, imagine how shocking it was to discover that most local septic tank services didn’t want to do business with me because somebody had already called them off! Yes, strangely, each one I contacted reported having been warned “not to get involved in THAT.” Finally, I found one who hadn’t been scared off, but he insisted that I have the surface of the tank unearthed before his crew arrived.  After spending a week unsuccessfully trying to find some laborer who hadn’t also been scared off, to dig up my septic tank so the septic company would pump and inspect it for me, I had to dig it up myself in 100 degree July heat. As soon as they learned of this, several local men had a lot to say about how sorry the “men” on the Water Authority Board of Directors are. Not only for allowing my house to be torn up in order for them to profit, but also for sitting back laughing at and making fun of me (as everybody heard they did) – guffawing as they told people that I was some woman who was claiming my septic tank was shaking my house. (Of course, this was just more spiteful, sexist pettiness because they so resent me being an engineer.) These local men (who had known my parents) found it despicable that I had to dig up my own septic tank in 100 degree heat because a pack of sorry old men had ridiculed and trashed me as “crazy,” and then “called off” and intimidated people until I couldn’t even hire anybody to help me with the damage THEY were causing to my home.

There is no doubt in my mind that I have been singled out and treated worse than most any other human being would have been with this situation, just because a pack of petty men with a redneck attitude, aren’t big enough to deal with the fact that it's a woman engineer pointing out what's wrong with their bush-league water main.  (Perhaps they should have had their disaster in some man’s yard, then!) It’s not my problem or my fault that some of them dropped out of high school and couldn’t have cut it in engineering (or any other college discipline)!   Gee, aren’t most communities proud of their citizens who blaze new frontiers and try to amount to something?   Only in Heard County do they try to destroy your life and run you off!

Back in June 2006, encountering some tall woman engineer using a few technical terms the Board of Directors weren’t familiar with, seemed to be more than especially Charles Pearce could handle.   I went to the Water Authority office on June 22, 2006 and quietly delivered a demand letter that this damage cease (as an attorney had advised me to do). As I was turning to leave, suddenly some little man shot out of a side door with his face red as a beet, and ran up to angrily confront me for complaining about the damage to my home!. He ran at me, pointing his finger at me in an accusing manner, and began practically spewing, “Let me tell you something! We don't go around tearing up people's houses." I informed him that in my case, they ARE tearing up my house! I tried to discuss this matter with him, but he would not listen and kept snorting things to the effect of: "No, that CAN'T be happening!" "That's not possible!" and tried his best to drown me out. He was totally dismissive towards me as if no woman could possibly have sense enough to know whether her home was being damaged. I was told that this was just some notion I had gotten in my head, and that they were "not going to bow down to [me]." (Whatever that is supposed to mean!)   He was determined that he wasn’t going to even entertain the possibility that what I was reporting might be valid. However, I sensed that he already KNEW what I was saying was true. What angered me most was his attitude that just because he said the problem wasn’t happening, then I was supposed to go away and pretend that all this damage just wasn’t happening. And running up against a woman who didn’t buy his BS and with whom things just don’t work that way, had Pearce all but hysterical. I’ll never forget him trying to rear up on his toes to be as tall as me, and looking just like some little riled-up rooster with his face red, and wagging his finger at me. When I got tired of his irrational arguing and ridiculous excuses and just turned to leave, he followed me to the door, jawing at me. This guy wasn’t just arguing with me, he was launching a feud and a male-ego peeing contest against me. And that attitude is reflective of how this matter has been handled ever since.

Pearce continued to direct an amazing degree of personal hostility and ego issues towards me, as this nightmare of their creation drug on.  A number of reliable people I know have described several incidents where he has ridiculed me and this problem at churches; telling people the exact opposite of what is really happening, and trying to convince folks that he’d “had to explain to Marie” various technical issues.   When in fact, each of these “explanations” he was describing to people, were technical terms (and verbatim terminology) that the Water Authority had learned from me!   Just before the judge entered the courtroom during a June 27, 2008 hearing in Heard Superior Court, Pearce loudly called me “a nut-job” in response to some citizen’s pointed question about why in the world they had me arrested.  (With him and the Water Authority tearing up my home, damaging my health, costing me my retirement savings, and preventing me from even sleeping in my own house!)  Charles Pearce resigned from the Water Authority Board of Directors over the Christmas 2008 holidays. His resignation closely followed several scathing complaints I had lodged which exposed his actions in this matter at both the state and local levels. Therefore, I couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t just one more token and hollow gesture to make it appear that something was being done for me. So what? At the end of the day, Pearce can still go home and sleep in his house, which isn’t warped and cracked with the metal roof lifted and leaking, and the mortar crumbling.

The old boys on the Water Authority Board of Directors chose to ignore me and this problem, and refused to spend so much as one penny on engineering services to find a solution to their disaster, forcing me (the person whose home they are destroying) to spend thousands of my own money to hire my own engineer. Then, when my engineer presented them in January 2007 with a proposal to fix the problem (as well as several temporary measures that would provide me with a little immediate relief from the destruction), they refused to even consider it and told him that they were not going to allow me to tell them what to do, and that the Heard County Water Authority was “not going to bow down to her.”  Where had I heard that before?

While I stood out in my front yard more freezing nights than I care to remember at 4:00 AM, listening to small chunks of mortar falling from the historic stone building I played in as a child; these “men” on the Water Authority Board of Directors had no qualms about "assuring" the community there was no validity to my complaints because I was “just crazy!” And they found it perfectly OK to make me the object of public ridicule and scorn, to stir up phony, malicious public concerns about me being “dangerous,” and to turn me into a local outcast akin to Bigfoot or the Unabomber.  They also found it perfectly OK to go right ahead for YEARS with activity which kept me from sleeping in my house and tormented me and damaged my health just because they are an unregulated water utility that can get away with it.  And all to keep this county from having to compensate a citizen whose life they were already ruining in order to profit from a side water sale.  And what about even trying to get me declared crazy or send me to jail to get rid of me, in part to keep everybody from learning how royally THEY had screwed up?  They should be in jail, NOT me!  I’m sure it will come as no surprise that in my eyes, these sorry “men” on the Water Authority Board of Directors are nothing but trash.  No regard whatsoever has been shown for my health or safety.  I have been placed in harm’s way so they and county officials can cover their own rears.

The way this nightmare has been handled makes it evident that the wrong kind of people are in charge of the Heard County Water Authority. The unprofessional, good-ol’ boy, “used-car-lot,” anything-you-can-get-away-with tactics of the Water Authority are a disservice to this small county.