For more
than three decades, Southeast Rural Community Assistance
Project, Inc. has earned the reputation on the state,
regional, national and even international levels as
providing expert service in the field of water and
What began as an attempt to bring safe drinking water to
rural poor residents of Virginia’s Roanoke Valley has
grown into an agency which has been directly responsible
for bringing safe water and sanitary waste disposal
facilities to more than 450,000 households in its seven
state region.
It all started in the mid 1960s when outreach workers
from a fledgling anti-poverty agency called Total Action
Against Poverty (TAP) went into the rural communities of
the counties around Roanoke with surveys to find out
what were the most pressing needs of the low-income
residents. Among the responses they heard over and over
again was the need for access to safe drinking water.
Low income families in the TAP service area were bailing
water from contaminated creeks and springs, catching
rainwater in buckets or buying water at the general
store in pop bottles.
Outreach workers identified at least 500 poor families
for whom access to safe drinking water was a critical
issue. By 1968 a group of community representatives from
the five counties in TAP’s service organized the
Demonstration Water Project (DWP). They received a grant
from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to
fund a program to help low-income families in the area
gain access to a safe water supply. During the period of
1970 to 1975, the Demonstration Water Project developed
water systems in 10 rural communities using a simple
methodology. Communities in need of assistance were
identified and groups of community residents were
organized to address their water problems. These
residents became the local non-profit, stock-owned water
companies in their communities and were trained by DWP
staff.
DWP would help these communities develop water projects,
including obtaining financing, gathering the requisite
official approval, and contributing engineering
services. Once the water systems were completed,
officers of the non-profit corporation would manage,
operate, and maintain the systems.
Officers of the non-profit corporations would also read
meters, prepare and issue bills, and collect fees to
assist with running their water companies and to repay
their FmHA loan.
The first grant for the new Demonstration Water Project
in Roanoke, Virginia was intended to bring water service
to rural communities in five Virginia counties. As the
federal OEO recognized the impact the program could have
nationwide, it wanted the project to design training in
order to replicate the same process used in rural
Virginia.