Abandoned Appalachia Series – The Old Whitesburg Water Treatment Plant
On the river side of School Hill in Whitesburg, a narrow gravel lane slips away from town traffic and climbs toward a gray concrete box in the trees. The old water treatment plant is only three stories tall, yet from below it looks almost like a watchtower. Blank window openings stare over the North Fork of the Kentucky River. Rusted pipe stubs jut from the retaining wall. There is broken glass in the weeds and the smell of damp concrete in the air.
For half a century this blocky little building stood between the river and every kitchen tap in the city. Generations of Whitesburg residents turned on their faucets without thinking about the pumps and filters on School Hill, only about the taste of the water in the glass. Today the plant is a vandalized ruin with ghost stories attached, but its history ties together mid century modernization, diesel spills, haunted house fundraisers, and ongoing efforts to protect a fragile Appalachian watershed.
A City Between River and Ridge
Whitesburg grew in a tight fold of the North Fork where Main Street, the courthouse square, and School Hill all press close to the water. For most of the twentieth century the river was at once highway, sewer, and source of life. Families drew drinking water from hand dug wells, springs, and small community systems long before there was a centralized municipal plant. That patchwork supply was common enough that the United States Geological Survey took a hard look at the area. In 1965 hydrologist D. S. Mull published a water supply paper on the ground water resources of the Jenkins and Whitesburg area, mapping wells, springs, and aquifers and noting how municipal demand was outgrowing older sources.
The report did not focus on scenic views. It treated the North Fork and its tributaries as working parts of a system. Coal camps, highway cuts, and steep hollows all fed sediment and runoff into the river. Mull’s study underscored what local officials already knew. If Whitesburg wanted a reliable modern water system for homes, schools, and the small but busy downtown, it needed a robust intake on the river and a treatment plant close by.
City records and oral histories suggest that by the early 1960s Whitesburg had committed to a full surface water treatment plant on School Hill, perched just above the North Fork and within sight of City Hall. The choice of location balanced risk and practicality. The plant’s intake would pull directly from the river, but the building itself sat high enough above ordinary flood levels to keep equipment dry.
From Wells to High Rate Filtration
In later decades outside observers captured the plant in the blunt language of engineering. When Veolia Water North America listed its Kentucky operations for a 2010 business proposal, it described “Whitesburg, Kentucky” as a surface water system serving roughly 3,960 people with a 0.864 million gallons per day high rate filtration plant, 28 miles of distribution line, and six storage tanks.
Behind those numbers were the everyday routines of a small Appalachian utility. Operators worked rotating shifts, watching raw river water move through flocculation, sedimentation, and filtration basins before chlorination and storage. The plant turned the North Fork into something safe enough to drink and predictable enough to trust. It supported the hospital, the courthouse, and every business along Main Street.
By the late 1990s, however, the system was running hard just to keep pace. Regulatory standards had tightened, treatment technology had advanced, and new subdivisions in Letcher County pushed more demand onto a finite supply. In filings before the Kentucky Public Service Commission in 2009 and 2010, city officials outlined the plant’s rated capacity and daily average production and acknowledged that much of that capacity was already spoken for on a typical day.
The technical documents were clinical, but their message was simple. For a growing service area the School Hill plant was small, aging, and vulnerable.
Warning Signs in the River
Those vulnerabilities were not just about gallons per day. They were about the North Fork itself. Upstream and downstream of Whitesburg, old mine works, fuel stations, small industries, and a web of rural roads all touched the river. By the early 2000s state planners were treating the reach around town as a problem to be tackled with both infrastructure and watershed work.
The Kentucky Infrastructure Authority’s drinking water planning documents for the 2012 funding cycle listed a “Whitesburg water treatment plant expansion” on the statewide priority list, a sign that the city was seeking low interest loan support for major plant work or replacement. At the same time the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute and local partners were preparing watershed plans focused on Crafts Colly, Sandlick, Dry Fork, and the main stem through town, with an eye toward combined sewer issues, failing package plants, and nonpoint pollution.
Regulators were also taking stock. The Kentucky Division of Water’s annual report for fiscal year 2009 emphasized the importance of safeguarding drinking water sources during droughts, ice storms, and fuel releases. In a short but telling passage the report noted that Whitesburg’s municipal system had been hit twice in six months by contamination events in its source water reach of the North Fork, an acknowledgment that the School Hill plant sat at a particularly hazardous bend in the river.
Diesel in the Tap: 2008 and 2009
The abstract concern about “source water risk” became real in November 2008. Residents began to notice that their tap water carried a smell closer to a filling station than a mountain spring. Kentucky Division of Water personnel traced a petroleum sheen on the North Fork to a seep near the intake and ordered Whitesburg’s plant shut down while reservoirs were flushed and tested.
Reporter Gabe Bullard of Louisville Public Media spoke with city clerk Garnet Saxon, who explained that the city was distributing free bottled water and waiting on lab results before telling people they could safely drink from the tap again. It was a small story by national standards, but an unsettling one for a town that had built its mid century optimism on the promise of clean, treated water.
The more serious blow came the following winter. In early 2009 state investigators linked a lingering petroleum odor at the plant to diesel fuel leaking from storage tanks and lines owned by Childers Oil several miles upstream. A state enforcement case and later summaries in a steel tank industry newsletter reported that fuel had migrated through soil and into a pit near the North Fork, then seeped into the river itself.
The Division of Water issued a non consumption advisory for thousands of customers while the spill was contained and contaminated soil removed. Notices of violation went not only to the company whose tanks had failed but also to the Whitesburg water plant for problems uncovered during the incident. Local coverage in The Mountain Eagle emphasized both the hardship on residents and the city’s efforts to keep water bills manageable while dealing with an emergency it had not caused.
Those two episodes changed how regulators looked at the system. Letcher County’s Consumer Confidence Reports and source water assessments in the years that followed repeatedly flagged the intake as highly susceptible to contamination, with past fuel spills cited explicitly as part of the risk profile. Third party compilations like the Environmental Working Group’s tap water database and other water quality dashboards captured the resulting test data and compliance history systemwide under the identifier KY0670466, drawing a straight line between the School Hill plant, regulatory sampling, and federal reporting.
Building a New Plant on Unsteady Ground
Even before diesel seeped into the North Fork, Whitesburg officials and state engineers were planning for a replacement facility. The School Hill building had simply run out of room. New treatment technologies and redundancy requirements could not easily be shoehorned into a compact hillside plant a short walk from downtown.
The answer was a larger plant along the river corridor, financed in part through Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loans and other state and federal money. The project was not simple. Geotechnical consultant Richard Cheeks later summarized the job as a kind of cautionary tale. According to his case notes, the general contractor began work without the benefit of a proper geotechnical investigation. When the plant’s foundations and below grade structures were placed on poorly characterized fill and riverbank materials, the site developed differential settlement that cracked concrete and alarmed city officials. The contractor defaulted, the bonding company took over, and Cheeks’ firm was brought in to assess the damage and design repairs.
Eventually the new plant was completed and brought online, with upgraded disinfection and more robust treatment. Later Kentucky Infrastructure Authority board books document follow up capital projects like an alternate disinfection process, suggesting that the new facility has continued to evolve in response to changing regulations and lessons learned from the diesel episodes.
The old School Hill plant, by contrast, had no second act in mind. Once the new plant took over, the older building was drained, decommissioned, and locked. It still belonged to the city, but it no longer had a clear job.
Watershed Plans and a Vulnerable Intake
Shutting down the School Hill plant did not end concern about the river reach that had fed it. In 2020 the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute released a comprehensive watershed plan for the North Fork tributaries around Whitesburg. The document described long standing impairments from pathogens, nutrients, and sediment tied to failing sewer systems, straight pipes, and stormwater problems in the same valleys that had supplied water customers for decades.
At the state level, the 2019 addendum to Kentucky’s statewide Total Maximum Daily Load report cited “Whitesburg Tributaries” watershed plans as tools for improving water quality in the Kentucky River basin. In 2024 the Division of Water’s Nonpoint Source Program annual report again referenced implementation work in the North Fork tributary watersheds, signaling that the area remains a priority for grants and on the ground projects.
For present day residents, most of this plays out behind the scenes. People care less about TMDL acronyms than about whether drinking water meets standards and tastes right. Data from Consumer Confidence Reports and third party summaries show a system that generally complies with state and federal limits while wrestling with familiar rural issues such as disinfection byproducts, aging mains, and source water vulnerabilities inherited from history.
The abandoned School Hill plant sits above all this as a kind of physical footnote. Its pumps and tanks are silent, but it marks the spot where Whitesburg’s relationship with the river shifted from springs and wells to modern regulation and statewide watershed planning.
Brimstone in the Filter Bays
If the story ended there, the old plant would simply be another relic of mid century infrastructure. Whitesburg residents, however, found another use for the building before it slid all the way into ruin. In the mid 2000s local organizer Sabrina Flick approached city officials with a proposal to turn the empty plant into a seasonal haunted house that would raise money for children’s causes and Shriners Hospitals.
Inside, the layout lent itself perfectly to scares. Visitors climbed narrow stairs, ducked through cramped galleries, and stepped around old tanks and pipe runs while volunteer cast members lurked in the shadows. Every October the structure traded chlorination for jump scares as “Brimstone,” a charity haunted house whose admission fees went straight back into the community.
For a decade the event drew big crowds. WYMT’s 2016 coverage called Brimstone a popular haunted house that had become a Letcher County tradition, quoting volunteers who spoke about the hundreds of people who came through its doors each Halloween season.
That same story, though, centered on a new problem. Vandals kept breaking into the old plant, smashing props, spray painting obscenities, and damaging city property just before opening night. In October 2016, WKYT reported that intruders surrounded the plant and threw rocks and bottles at the building while visitors were inside, forcing volunteers and police to scramble to keep everyone safe.
Organizers had already suggested that 2016 might be Brimstone’s final year. The fourth wave of vandalism made the decision easier. After that season the haunted house folded, and the School Hill plant returned to darkness.
Folklore, Paranormal Lists, and Blight
Once the screams of paying customers stopped, other voices took over. Local rumor invested the empty plant with a catalogue of hauntings. Disembodied voices echo through the filter bays. Dark figures appear in the doorway cutouts. A metallic clanging rings through the building when no one is there.
Paranormal catalog sites such as GhostQuest now list the “Old Whitesburg Water Treatment Plant” among Kentucky’s haunted locations, repeating stories of strange sounds and ghostly sightings without much concern for hydraulic history. In October 2016 The Mountain Eagle ran a playful notice inviting readers to “meet the ghosts of Letcher County” at the Brimstone haunted house, linking the building’s reputation directly to the county’s emerging ghost tour culture.
At the same time planners and community groups were looking at the plant in a very different context. A recent blight and revitalization study prepared by the University of Virginia School of Architecture in partnership with Appalshop uses Whitesburg as a case study in how abandoned and underused properties shape downtown health. Among the derelict buildings on their radar are river corridor structures and old municipal facilities near School Hill, including sites like the former plant that sit at the junction of public infrastructure and long term neglect.
Grassroots organizations such as Cowan Community Action Group have also tied the North Fork corridor to broader watershed improvement goals in newsletters and project updates connected to federal nonpoint source grants. They talk less about phantoms and more about septic systems, riparian plantings, and public access, but the old plant still looms in the background as part of the story of how residents relate to the river.
Between Ruin and Possibility
Today the School Hill plant is a study in layers. Behind the vandalism and peeling paint lies a mid century utility that helped bring treated drinking water to a coalfield courthouse town. Behind that, a web of state and federal documents tracks how a small system navigated new regulations, diesel spills, and a major plant replacement on unstable soil. On top of that history sit a decade of haunted house memories and a growing pile of ghost stories.
Whether the building ever finds another use is an open question. Blight studies and revitalization proposals give it context but not yet a clear plan. Demolition would remove a liability but also erase a rare piece of mid century municipal architecture that still tells a complicated story about water, risk, and community improvisation in the mountains.
For now the old Whitesburg water treatment plant remains what it looks like from the lane below: a concrete shell watching the river go by. Its windows frame the North Fork that once fed its settling basins and still supplies the city at a newer, shinier plant downstream. Its corridors remember the smell of diesel, the shouted warnings of regulators, the laughter of October crowds, and the soft insistence of people who insist they heard a voice when no one was there.
If you visit the area, remember that the building is city property and is posted against trespassing. Observe it from public rights of way, respect the fences and signs, and let its story do the haunting.
Sources & Further Reading
Mull, D. S. Ground-Water Resources of the Jenkins–Whitesburg Area, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 1809-A. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965. https://doi.org/10.3133/wsp1809A
Kentucky Division of Water. Annual Report FY 2009. Frankfort: Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, 2009. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/2009%20Annual%20Reports/KDOW-AnnualReportFY09.pdf
Kentucky Public Service Commission. Case No. 2009-00465, Letcher County Water and Sewer District: Responses of the City of Whitesburg. Frankfort: Kentucky Public Service Commission, February 5, 2010. https://psc.ky.gov/pscscf/2009%20cases/2009-00465/20100205_whitesburg_response_1_of_4.pdf
Veolia Water North America Operating Services. “Appendix B: Veolia Water O&M Project List.” In Business and Qualifications Proposal: Fort Monroe, proposal to the Fort Monroe Authority, October 22, 2010. https://fortmonroe.org/wp-content/uploads/Veolia-Water-FT-MONROE-Business-Proposal-10-22-2010.pdf
Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund: Intended Use Plan, State Fiscal Year 2012. Frankfort: Kentucky Infrastructure Authority, August 8, 2011. https://kia.ky.gov/FinancialAssistance/Intended%20Use%20Plans/2012%20DWSRF%20FINAL%20IUP.pdf
Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. Board Meeting Booklet. Frankfort: Kentucky Infrastructure Authority, February 1, 2018. https://kia.ky.gov/kia-board/Archived%20Board%20Books/02-01-18_boardbook.pdf
Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. Board Meeting Booklet. Frankfort: Kentucky Infrastructure Authority, March 6, 2025. https://kia.ky.gov/kia-board/Archived%20Board%20Books/03-06-25_boardbook.pdf
Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute. North Fork: Whitesburg Tributaries Watershed Plan, Letcher County, KY. Lexington: Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University of Kentucky, 2020. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kwrri_reports/262
Kentucky Division of Water. Kentucky Nonpoint Source Program Annual Report 2024. Frankfort: Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, 2024. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Protection/Documents/KYNPSAnnualReport2024.pdf
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Addendum to Kentucky Statewide Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for Bacteria Impaired Waters: Kentucky River Basin Appendix. Atlanta: U.S. EPA Region 4, 2021. https://attains.epa.gov/attains-public/api/documents/actions/21KY/KYACT_5/201757
Letcher County Water and Sewer District. Water Quality Report / Consumer Confidence Report (various years). https://tapwaterinfo.com/letchercounty.pdf
Environmental Working Group. “Whitesburg Water Works, KY0670466.” EWG Tap Water Database. Washington, DC: Environmental Working Group, 2018–2024. https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=KY0670466
TapWaterData. “Whitesburg Water Works Water Quality.” TapWaterData, 2025. https://www.tapwaterdata.com/utilities/ky/whitesburg-water-works
Kentucky Division of Water. 2023 Triennial Report to the Governor on Kentucky’s Drinking Water Capacity Development Program. Frankfort: Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, 2023. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-11/ky-capacity-development-triennial-report-2023.pdf
Appalachian Regional Commission. FY 2022 Performance Budget Justification. Washington, DC: Appalachian Regional Commission, 2021. https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/FY2022-Congressional-Budget-Justification.pdf
Gateway Area Development District. Water and Wastewater Big Stat-Book 2016. Morehead, KY: Gateway Area Development District, 2016. https://gwadd.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/GatewayADD_StatBook_2016.pdf
City of Whitesburg. “City Departments.” City of Whitesburg, Kentucky, 2024. https://cityofwhitesburgky.com/city-departments
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “North Fork: Whitesburg Tributaries Watershed Plan, Letcher County KY.” Kentucky Division of Water, 2020. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Reports/Reports/WBP-NorthForkWhitesburgTributaries.pdf
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Section 319(h) Grant Program Funding: Whitesburg Tributaries Implementation I.” Kentucky Division of Water, c. 2020. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Protection/Pages/Section-319%28h%29-Grant-Program-Funding.aspx
Gabe Bullard. “Whitesburg Water Contaminated.” WFPL News (Louisville Public Media), November 4, 2008. https://www.lpm.org/news/2008-11-04/whitesburg-water-contaminated
Bill Estep. “Tests Confirm Diesel in Letcher Water.” Lexington Herald-Leader, February 22, 2009. Reprinted in Tank and Petroleum Use Mishaps no. 309 (2009). https://stispfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/news-309.pdf
Department of Homeland Security. Department of Homeland Security Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report for 13 November 2008. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008. https://www.studylib.net/doc/12065399/department-of-homeland-security-daily-open-source-infrast
“City Water Plant Cited After Spill.” The Mountain Eagle (Whitesburg, KY), c. February 2009. https://www.themountaineagle.com/articles/city-water-plant-cited-after-spill
Kassidy Stricklett. “Vandalism Jeopardizes Popular Haunted House.” WYMT News, October 12, 2016. https://www.wymt.com/content/news/Vandalism-jeopardizes-popular-haunted-house-396866821.html
“Letcher County Haunted House Vandalized for the Fourth Time.” WKYT News, October 23, 2016. https://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Letcher-County-haunted-house-vandalized-for-the-fourth-time-398130541.html
GhostQuest.net. “Whitesburg Water Treatment Plant – ‘The Old Water Treatment Plant’.” In Haunted Places in Kentucky. GhostQuest, c. 2019. https://www.ghostquest.net/haunted-places-kentucky-usa.html
Richard Cheeks. “Whitesburg, Kentucky Water Treatment Plant.” Stokley-Cheeks and Associates, Inc., c. 2004. https://www.richardcheeks.com/associates/profiles/Whitesburg_Treatment_Plant-x.htm
University of Virginia School of Architecture and Appalshop. BRIGHT Opportunities for Whitesburg, Kentucky. Charlottesville: University of Virginia School of Architecture, 2025. https://appalshop.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/BRIGHT-Whitesburg-UVA-Report.pdf
Cowan Community Action Group. “Whitesburg Tributaries Implementation Project.” Newsletter, c. 2015. https://robertsonscholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Cowan-newsletter-1-1015.pdf
Author’s Note: Graffiti and vandalism have hit the old Whitesburg water treatment plant hard, leaving broken glass, rusted metal, and unstable surfaces throughout the structure. There are sharp edges, sudden drop offs, and weak floors and stairs that can give way without warning. If you choose to view the site, do not go alone, stay on public rights of way, and treat it as a hazardous, unsafe building rather than a tourist attraction.