Fairview waterline project gets support

Would extend public service to 142 customers on outskirts of town

By Mallory Panuska

FAIRMONT — Several local representatives in Marion and Monongalia counties are using their political sway to help extend water service to residents on the outskirts of the Town of Fairview.

The seven-member Fairview Water Extension Committee held two similar meetings with delegates and representatives for both counties in Morgantown and Fairmont this week to render support for a $4.4 million project to extend public water service to 142 customers on the outskirts of the town.

Monday, the group met with representatives in Morgantown, and Tuesday, they had discussions with Marion County dignitaries in Fairmont.

At each of the sessions, the group presented the details of the slated waterline extension project. The group has been working for over a year and half on this project and has thus far polled the residents in the area, hired an engineering firm to start the process, and raised enough money from both county commissions to complete a feasibility study as the first steps in getting the project off of the ground.

The study, which breaks down the amount of funding needed to get the project from design to completion, was completed by Woolpert Engineering and funded 80 percent by the Marion County Commission and 20 percent by Monongalia County. Woolpert Engineering project engineer Jamie Weist was also at the meeting in Fairmont to answer questions about the project.

Others in attendance at that meeting were local Delegates Mike Caputo and Tim Manchin, County Commissioner Randy Elliott, Region VI representatives Jim Hall and Lea Wolfe, and representatives from Congressman Alan Mollohan’s and U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefellers’ offices. Manchin and Caputo said that Delegate Linda Longstreth, who was not able to make it to the meeting, is also in support of the project along with the other officials.

“We will work as a team to get this funding,” Caputo said of the project funds. “This is a tremendous team that works together, and we will get it eventually. We’ve just got to keep working at it.”

Manchin said the state government is in strong support of infrastructure projects such this one across the state and are working diligently to help allot funding in those directions.

“The governor as well as the House are highly committed to serving the unserved that are out there,” he said. “Infrastructure projects are huge for the Manchin administration and the senate.”

Mollohan and Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., have written letters to the committee in support of the project. Byrd’s letter, which is dated August of 2008, states that he planned to contact the West Virginia Development Office and express his support for the committee’s $1.5 million Small Cities Block Grant (SCBG) application for the project.

Monongalia County Delegates Alex Shook, Barbara Fleischauer, Charlene Marshall and Robert Beach were in attendance at the Morgantown meeting and have drafted a letter to Gov. Joe Manchin asking for his support in obtaining at least $250,000 of the total $1.5 million SCBG request to complete the design phase of the project.

Wolfe explained that the project needs the $250,000 to get to the “readiness to proceed” phase of the project, which is the next step.

Ice said that she could not be happier or more thankful for the support of all of these elected officials.

“Without these people’s support and those commissions coming together like they did for that study we could have never gotten off the ground,” she said. “I am just thrilled to have the support. The support is there, and the interest of our elected officials is there.”

According to the feasibility study, the funding sources estimated for the project will come $1.5 million from the SCBG, $1.1 from an Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council (IJDC) grant, $1.1 million from an IJDC loan, and $736,000 from a State Tribal Assistance Grant.

For Marion County’s portion, the PVC piping for the total $4.4 million project is estimated to cost $817,576, with Monongalia County’s segment set to cost over $1.45 million. In total, the breakdown of the costs equal more than $1.68 million in Marion County and $2.73 million in Monongalia.

Also according to the study, there are about two-thirds of the total number of residents seeking this extension live in Monongalia County and the other one-third are in Marion.

The Marion County Commissioners have said they will help pay for the piping for the project, but Monongalia County has not committed anything past the 20 percent already donated for the feasibility study.

Monongalia County Commissioner Asel Kennedy said this week that if it is determined that the project will be getting some state funding he has estimated that the commission could probably donate about $5,000 per household to the project.

However, he said that nothing can be decided until after the committee finds out if it will be receiving any grant funding.

“We need to see if the state is going to do the funding. If we do get funding, I think it is appropriate for the county commission to determine if we have money and how much,” he said. “My thought was $5,000 per house is about how much we could support. We would have to see how many houses are in the final version in Mon County. I don’t know how many houses it will reach until the final design work is done.”

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.