WYOMING COUNTY, W.Va. (WOAY) – A tragic turn in Indian Creek, where a resident’s horse has died after being exposed to an artesian well that recently began flowing on her property, raising new concerns about the region’s ongoing water contamination crisis.
Tammy Smith has cared for horses for more than a decade. But this past week, a 24-year-old horse that has been living on her land for ten years, fell gravely ill and died under what she describes as unexplained and alarming circumstances.
“It’s been two weeks since the horse got down sick,” Smith said. “But I noticed it about a week before that, so it’s been probably right along a month.”
In late April, Smith noticed water artesianing from the ground in multiple places within one of her horses’ pastures. Soon after, the horse’s health started to decline.
“I noticed he wasn’t drinking any water. He just quit drinking water, period. I started giving him extra salt in his feed to encourage him to drink, but then I noticed he wasn’t eating his grain and was just nibbling at his hay. I found his hay still in his barn and his grain still in his box,” Smith said.
Smith took the horse to a trusted vet in Kentucky, and after some tests, the vet revealed the horse was having serious liver issues.
“They did blood work on him. And they found that he had high liver enzymes. It was 127, and it should have been around 24,” Smith said.
After leaving the clinic, Smith says the horse’s condition worsened rapidly. He became increasingly weak and began passing blood, signs she says confirmed just how sick he truly was.
Smith provided photographic evidence of the horse’s condition in the days before his death, including signs of severe decline and internal bleeding. WOAY reviewed the images but chose not to publish them due to their graphic nature.
After a decade of care, the news of sudden liver failure was heartbreaking, and the only explanation the vets had was that the horse had come into contact with something toxic.
“The vet just absolutely told me, he said, it had to be in something toxic, and the only thing I can think of is the water, because he always had access to that water,” Smith said.
After hard days and long nights, Smith made the tough decision to put the horse down as his condition deteriorated beyond the point of recovery.
Smith’s other horse, which drinks from a separate source and lives in a separate pasture, remains healthy. Residents and neighbors say that difference isn’t a coincidence.
Smith is not only fighting to keep her animals supplied with safe water, but she is also fighting for herself.
“I do know that my well water has changed over the last two years. It’s gotten awful, I can’t stand the smell of it, it smells like rotten eggs and maybe even worse than that,” she said. “Even my clothes have odors now when I wash them, and I can’t get rid of it.”
She’s been drinking bottled water for the last two years. However, that hasn’t stopped other possible effects, including skin symptoms she says may be tied to showering in the same water.
“I’ve had places come up on me, like little warts, right on my back where my shower hits.”
Her story joins a growing chorus of residents across Wyoming County who say their water smells foul, causes illness, and has never been tested by state regulators. Several unregulated artesian flows, like the one on Smith’s land, have begun surfacing across the region, including near former mining sites.
The next hearing in the county’s water contamination case is scheduled for July 9 at 1 p.m. in Wyoming County Circuit Court.
After two years of battling for a basic necessity and losing what felt like a member of her family, Smith just wants answers.
“I just want to know what’s in this water.”
