BY JoNELL STROUGH
MUB is on the wrong track.
The Morgantown Utility Board’s plan to run a water pipeline through White Park is short-sighted. If it were enacted, it would be devastating. The landscape in this area would be forever altered by changing networks of shady, tree-lined walking and mountain-biking trails into a 40- to 60-foot-wide, mosquito-filled field. Hundreds of trees would be razed. Caves and other sites of interest would be bulldozed and buried.
There are paths that don’t affect White Park at all. MUB should choose one of these.
Why is MUB’s plan so destructive and nonsensical? Let me count the ways.
White Park is one of Morgantown’s premier outdoor attractions. It draws tourists from all over the world, and is a significant attraction to people who are considering making Morgantown their permanent home. To damage the park would be to damage Morgantown’s economy.
MUB’s plans would clear-cut hundreds of trees that make up a sizable part of the forest. They would also endanger White Park’s “witness” trees, a designation that refers to the trees being so old that they were alive to “witness” historical events such as the Civil War. Some of these trees have “tomahawk” marks, which were used to indicate property lines during Morgantown’s early settlement. These trees are irreplaceable.
MUB’s proposed pipeline through White Park could encounter unmitigated, contaminated soil from former oil tanks and the “tar pits” that remain in the park. MUB’s marked route crosses old, rusted oil pipes near the streambed, potentially releasing old oil into Cobun Creek and the Monongahela River.
Public access to the park will be restricted due to the excavation of an 8-foot trench. Afterwards, MUB’s plans to cut a 40- to 60-foot wide swath through the park will significantly alter users’ experience of the trails, especially in the peak-use summer months when trailside trees offer significant shade and cooling.
The wooded areas of the park not only offer shade to park users, but they serve as key habitat for animals and the resident and migrating birds, including the Cerulean warbler, Louisiana waterthrush, merlins and red-shouldered hawks, saw-wet owls and wood ducks, among others. Construction in the park during the spring and summer months will permanently alter the life cycle of many species.
MUB’s plans call for cutting across a steep hillside (near the waterfalls area at the far end of the park approaching Don Knotts Boulevard) and then into the streambed, causing significant concerns of erosion into Cobun Creek and the Mon River. The work will be done by an out-of-state contractor. It is unclear if the streambed disturbance violates any regulations imposed by the Army Corps of Engineers due to its proximity to the river. This should be determined before excavation proceeds.
Given the serious nature of these concerns, especially the threats posed to public health caused by disturbing the brownfields and the scars to the landscape that will not heal in any of our lifetimes, it’s imperative that MUB find an alternate route outside the park.
The cost of pursuing a different path cannot be nearly as expensive as the damage the current plan would do to White Park and therefore to Morgantown as a whole.
Preserving all of the forested areas in Morgantown’s White Park is essential for current residents and future generations.
JoNell Strough is a professor of psychology at WVU and the chair of the Mon Valley Green Space Coalition. This commentary should be considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or editorial policy of The Dominion Post.
