DINGESS A decade-long effort finally came to fruition Wednesday night when local officials lifted shovels to mark the construction of a public water system for Dingess.

“This is a project dear to my heart,” Mingo County Commission President John Mark Hubbard told the more than 100 people who attended the ceremony, held at Dingess Grade School. “Since I have been a commissioner, I haven’t made many promises. But I did give you my word that Dingess would be the next water project. You have waited too long for this.”

However, Commissioner Greg Hootie Smith said politicians were not the ones who made the success possible.

“We can show up here with gold shovels,” Smith said. “But it wasn’t the politicians who did the real work it was you, the people of Dingess. You talked to your neighbors, you did the paperwork. You got tired of being lied to and tired of being neglected. You demanded answers, you demanded water.”

Phase one of the project will supply potable water to some 570 residents of the Dingess area. The second part of the system is set to be completed with 24 months, and will reach residents of Jennie’s Creek and Marrowbone.

Commissioner David Baisden said the children in the county need and deserve safe clean water.

“Every boy and girl in Mingo County should have clean water,” Baisden said. “By July or August, you will.”

Baisden added he hoped the companies performing the construction would remember the local population when hiring people to work on the project.

“I want the contractors to remember there are people here in Dingess who can do this work,” Baisden said.

Bobby Lewis, State Director of USDA Rural Development, commended the citizens of the area for working to bring the system to Dingess.

“Our programs are only as good as the people we partner with,” Lewis said. “And Mingo County is good people.”