Dellie Green lives with his niece and her husband in a four-room house with sagging floors and no indoor plumbing.

The Charles City County residents use a portable toilet out back and wash up using basins. They get their water by filling up jugs at a relative's house next door, a chore Green says is hell when it's raining or snowing.

"It's hard on me -- a man 67 years having to tote 5-gallon jugs," Green said. "It's bad when a man can't come in and take a shower when you need to."

A new home with a bathroom and running water will replace the 1965 wood-frame house off Church Lane if state officials approve a funding request from the county. An announcement could come in the next few weeks.

Charles City officials applied for $1.4 million in state and federal money for the project in the Gilfield-Church Lane area.

The plan is to rehabilitate 11 homes, replace eight homes and install wastewater service at 25 homes. Three of the homes lack indoor plumbing. Residents who would get a new home would receive a no-interest, 10-year loan and pay anywhere from $25 to about $500 per month, depending on their household incomes.

The Gilfield-Church Lane initiative would be the latest of several such projects in Charles City and elsewhere, as rural counties in the Richmond metro area seek to improve timeworn enclaves that haven't kept up with the progress of modern times.

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"This is 2008, and it's America, and we still have people living without indoor plumbing," said Ed Baber, chairman of Charles City's Planning Commission and executive director of CrossGap Ministries, a nonprofit group focused on safe and affordable housing. "That just should not be."

Charles City also has applied for $15,000 from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development to conduct a housing-needs assessment, which would include a survey of about 500 homes believed to need improvement.

In 1990, hundreds of occupied homes in Charles City lacked complete indoor plumbing, county officials say. Now they put the number at around 70 homes. Caroline County officials gave the same estimate.

But statewide estimates of the number of homes without indoor plumbing are hard to come by, said Todd Christensen, a deputy director for the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Christensen said statistics from the 2000 Census are out of date and probably underestimate the problem, in part because surveyors would have difficulty finding the isolated communities where it's a problem.

Also, it can be hard to distinguish between occupied structures and abandoned ones. For one project in St. Stephens Church in King and Queen County, workers had to remove about 167 junk cars, eight piles of debris, 30 loads of junk and seven dilapidated structures before they could upgrade the area's homes.

"There was a lot of trash that people had just thrown out in the backyard," said Donna Thompson, executive director of Scenario Inc., a nonprofit housing-development organization based in King and Queen.

Other such projects are under way or nearly finished in Caroline, King William and New Kent counties. West Point is the only locality in the Richmond metro area in addition to Charles City that applied this year for federal Community Development Block Grant funding for a housing-upgrade project.

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Rural counties across the state have homes that lack indoor plumbing, Christensen said, but a problem facing a greater number of Virginians is failing septic systems.

In Charles City, more than two-thirds of the land's soil is poorly suited for septic systems, said county development planner John T. Bragg Jr.

Failing septic systems release wastewater into saturated drainage fields, in some cases causing sewage to bubble up to the surface when it rains, which can threaten the sanitation of well water.

Using state and federal funds, Charles City had alternative septic systems installed for its latest project, which is nearly finished and includes the rehabilitation or replacement of 15 homes in the Kimages-Wayside area. A similar alternative wastewater system would be used for the Gilfield-Church Lane initiative.

The alternative septic systems pre-treat sewage the same way as conventional septic systems but then take the wastewater through a second filter system that releases clean water into drainage fields.

With the Kimages-Wayside project, Charles City became the first locality in Virginia to take ownership of an alternative septic system.

Caroline officials are nearly finished with a project in the Dawn area that provides a similar alternative wastewater system to about 180 homes and replaces or rehabilitates roughly 25 homes. Like Charles City, Caroline owns and operates the wastewater system.

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For the Gilfield-Church Lane project, Charles City has requested a combination of federal Community Development Block Grant funds and state indoor-plumbing money. Nearly $20 million in CDBG funds is available in Virginia each year and about $8 million from the state's Indoor Plumbing Program.

The Department of Housing and Community Development has made its recommendation to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's office on how the money should be dispersed. The governor is expected to make an announcement soon on which localities will get money, and how much.

Janice Cotman, 59, would get a new home if the Charles City project is approved.

Her mobile home off Church Lane has a tarp draped across the roof that doesn't keep out the rain. She has cold running water but no working toilet or bathtub.

"I think we need a house," Cotman said. "That'd be better." Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or rwilliams@timesdispatch.com.