MORGANTOWN — With two unanimous votes Monday, the Morgantown Utility Board rejected a licensing agreement proposal from the city of Morgantown and withdrew its interest in running a water line through White Park.
MUB Chairman J.T. Straface explained that despite more than four months of public discourse and closed-door negotiations between MUB, the city and BOPARC, concensus “is beyond any reasonable reach.”
MUB will instead begin work as soon as possible to construct a water line and pumping station that will move water down Mississippi Street and around the park — Route 5/5a on the list of potential route options presented by MUB and available on its website, mub.org.
MUB General Manager Tim Ball has previously said 5/5a could come with customer rate increases as it will add an estimated $6.43 million to the $2.11 million already budgeted for the 30-inch water line, for a total of $8.54 million.
The line is needed to bring water from the George B. Flegal Dam & Reservoir — an emergency, secondary water source currently under construction along Cobun Creek — to the utility’s treatment facility on Don Knotts Boulevard.
The previously agreed upon route through the park, Route 3, was the shortest and would have been gravity fed. It was estimated to cost an additional $800,000, or $2.9 million total.
Asked after the meeting if he still believed rate increases were in play for the longer route and pumping station, Ball said, “Yes, that’s possible.”
After the votes, Straface offered a statement explaining the decision.
“In every transaction, it’s the seller’s right to set the price and the buyer’s right to accept or decline. Each agency is obligated to act in the best interest of its mission. For the best interest of its ratepayers, MUB has chosen to decline the price of the pipeline license.”
That price, according to Straface, included three deal breakers for the utility, including:
- The city’s insistence on language allowing it to order the proposed $3 million pipeline be removed at any time, for any reason, at MUB’s expense.
- BOPARC’s demand for payment of replacement value of trees estimated at more than $1 million in addition to MUB’s pledge to plant two trees for every one removed during pipeline construction.
- BOPARC’s demand that MUB not just allow, but build at its expense, recreational features at the new Flegal Reservoir.
“We have chosen to take a different route that allows us to escape the limbo of recent months, and allows MUB to promptly resume construction of our project,” Straface said. “We now must work with a second-choice option. We aren’t happy about that; no one should be. But more than anything we are committed to completing the pipeline as soon as possible.”
Asked if Monday’s actions ended negotiations or if he expected a counter offer, Ball said “I don’t know what to expect.”
Asked if he believed negotiations were purposely aimed at forcing MUB to abandon the more cost effective gravity-fed route through White Park, Ball said. “I don’t know,” adding his belief that MUB has been more than flexible throughout this process.
The breakdown in licensing negotiations came after MUB, Morgantown City Council and BOPARC all voted to approve Route 3. This choice, tweaked multiple times along the way, was the result of months of public discussion and at least eight public meetings.
As a part of those discussions, MUB agreed to the 2:1 tree replanting as well as the construction of a new walking trail through the park and a connected foot bridge.
This whole issue rose to the fore in April after it was learned MUB intended to run the line along the existing park trail. MUB stopped work and abandoned that route after public outcry over the impact that it would have on the park and hundreds of its mature trees.
The new reservoir and pipeline is a roughly $50 million project. It’s being funded through water and sewer rate increases that took effect in July 2016.
