Opinion
Nobody wins with continued foot dragging on waterline
The West Virginia Public Service Commission sets the benchmark of water use for an average family at 4,500 gallons per month.
If you do a little simple math, that would mean that the average family uses about 54,000 gallons of water per year. And customers of the City of Mannington have spent five years, or 270,000 gallons of water each, waiting for the completion of a 13-mile line that would pipe in water from Fairmont.
Five years, 270,000 gallons of water, four Mannington mayors involved in the project — the late Orval Price, Lenny Stafford, Frank White and incoming mayor Robert Garcia. Three Fairmont mayors — Nick Fantasia, Scott Sears and Matt Delligatti. Two Fairmont city managers — Bruce McDaniel and Jim Snider. And countless changeovers on both city councils.
Remarkably, the 270,000-gallon average is pretty close to the 300,000 gallons per day Mannington is expected to need. And though Fairmont officials have said the project will be revenue-neutral once complete, it seems like a lot of revenue has gone down the drain in five years. At $1.93 per 1,000 gallons resell-rate, Fairmont would have been able to charge Mannington $1,056,675 over the past five years. And now the resell rate has increased, at least in the interim, to about $2.41 per 1,000 gallons. Imagine how much more revenue that would be flowing back toward Fairmont could be lost without a timely finish.
And even before Fairmont water starts flowing through Mannington’s pipes, Mannington is stuck with a $70,000 deficit in its water fund, which they will fight with a water-rate increase. Sounds like Mannington is starting to take after Fairmont there. In the meantime, Mannington has a failing water plant — one that needed to be replaced long before its financing was delayed and eventually turned down by the West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council.
The better option was clear — Fairmont takes Mannington’s grant money and builds a 13-mile line along U.S. Route 250. That battle delayed the process. And then Mannington shuffled its feet about signing the contract for the line. And then rights-of-way became an issue. And then CSX Corp. wanted to charge a cost-prohibitive amount to install the pipe along its railroad property.
And Mannington officials keep crossing their fingers, hoping the plant will make it through to the completion date of the waterline. And the date? That’s something that no one seems to be in agreement about. Who knows whether it will be July (Fairmont), August (Mannington) or December (Region VI) Until then, Mannington keeps pumping money into chemicals, manpower and maintenance so that they can keep pumping water out of a failing plant.
And five years have passed.
Nobody wins when feet drag on a project of this magnitude. It is time to set it all aside and finish this project.
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