No matter which of the 10 currently available choices the Morgantown Utility Board decides to pick to finish the path from its new backup reservoir at Coburn Creek to its treatment plant on Don Knotts Boulevard, construction won’t begin until Thanksgiving, at the earliest.
MUB General Manager Tim Ball explained the project’s contractor, D & M Contracting, is expected to finish up everything related to the project except laying the 30-inch diameter raw water pipe that was originally planned to pass through White Park. Following that, they will pack up and move to a job in Romney and won’t be able to return until late fall or winter.
The proposed route was cancelled and the completion of the project put on hold until a new route can be decided on after significant public backlash when it became evident the utility planned to clear hundreds of trees in White Park to accommodate the line.
Additionally, MUB will pay a $12,000 remobilization fee and $3,000 a month to store the pipes that will eventually connect the reservoir to the treatment plant. Ball said the contractor has been exceptional with its understanding of the situation and the fees are entirely reasonable.
The decision was made to buy the pipes since they would be required no matter the route and store them because of the uncertainty of the on-going tariffs, Doug Smith, assistant manager and chief engineer, said.
The MUB board was expected to propose a route during its regular Thursday meeting but Ball recommended it not as soil samples from the park — which was used for storage of chemicals in the past — have not been collected and tested. Triad Engineering has been hired to conduct the testing and will follow the same standards as when they did a similar project for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in 2009.
Several members of the public spoke about the proposed routes with several favoring route 5 or 5a and the rest favoring plan 3 or 8.
Plans 3 and 8 are almost the same and would place the pipeline on the Green Bag Road side of White Park, south of the existing Cobun Creek reservoir. Ball said the difference in the two is where they connect on Mississippi Street but they quickly converge into the same route.
Plans 5 and 5a run the length of Mississippi to Callen Avenue. Smith said these plans would need four to six months of construction time during which Mississippi would be left in a mostly gravel condition. It would involve moving water, gas and sewage lines and require a pumping station.
Plans 5 and 5a are both more expensive than 3 and 8 because of the pumping station requirement. All plans and their prices are available on MUB’s website.
Some area residents expressed concern about the construction’s impact on their lives and one woman said she would be OK with those plans because of her concern over the loss of trees as a sound barrier, increasing the amount of noise coming from Green Bag Road.
Also related to the pipeline, Ball said the Urban Landscape Commission and tree board sent a joint letter recommending either 3 or 8 and suggested hiring a professional arborist to consult on the project — a move Ball said MUB agrees with and is working on.
Smith also presented the carbon capture calculations and said MUB employees measured every tree over 6 inches in diameter and used the maximum capture figure of 48 pounds a year in their calculation to err on the side of caution. The big finding he said, is that a pumping station will emit significantly more carbon, even running just one day a month as it will at first, than any carbon capture lost to the plans that involve removing trees. The exact numbers are available on MUB’s website.
Smith also said MUB is committed to replanting any trees removed at a two-to-one ratio, which would result in an even bigger reduction in carbon in the long run and said MUB would work with the tree board to determine the best places to plant them, since, obviously, they couldn’t go back where they were.
The board also approved its budget for fiscal year 2019-2020. Ball said on the whole, the utility’s four budgets, run about 3-4 % in the negative, but that’s because he increased the amount of capital expenditures for the coming year.
Most utilities, and Ball himself in previous years, balance budgets by decreasing what is spent on building and replacing pipelines. Ball said it’s a good practice and good way to maintain budget discipline but too many years in a row of saving can cause the value of the public assets to degrade.
