MORGANTOWN — With the promise of millions in infrastructure dollars flowing into West Virginia, the Morgantown Utility Board is positioning a handful of capital improvement initiatives in the hopes of cashing in.
General Manager Mike McNulty recently received the blessing of the utility’s board of directors to advertise for various levels of engineering on three projects.
The first, and most pressing according to McNulty, is expansion of the utility’s Cheat Lake wastewater treatment facility.
According to The Dominion Post archive, the plant was originally built in 1984 with a capacity of 250,000 gallons per day.
MUB bought the plant in 1998 and immediately launched a complete overhaul, almost completely replacing it as part of the $10.3 million system upgrade. The treatment plant capacity was expanded to 750,000 gallons per day. Public sanitary sewer service was extended to more than 1,500 customers in the Cheat Lake area through new interceptors.
In 2018, MUB spent $1.4 million to purchase 12.7 acres adjacent to the property, citing the need for expansion in order to keep up with population growth, which has since continued.
“The growth out there is tremendous. It’s exploding, actually, is probably the best way to put it. And we’re already having days of peak demand. We’re hitting those numbers now,” McNulty said.
The utility hired Strand Associates, the same firm that designed the previous upgrade, to provide preliminary engineering, which is nearly complete.
Once complete, McNulty said, MUB will be ready to advertise for project design engineering services.
The board of directors also approved advertising for preliminary engineering on an update to the pumphouse in MUB’s water treatment facility, which includes high service pumps ranging in age from 40 to 70 years old.
Further, three of the four raw water pumps responsible for pulling water from the Monongahela River and into the facility are more than 40 years old.
Lastly, preliminary engineering will be sought on upgrades to the Sabraton and Union water systems.
“The Sabraton system supplies water to customers in the Sabraton, Brookhaven and Dellslow areas and the Union system pumps water directly from the Sabraton system to supply customers along Tyrone Road and out toward Cheat Lake. It also serves the Snake Hill area and Masontown Water Works,” McNulty said, explaining that everybody is awaiting word on how the money will be doled out.
“I think there is several hundred million coming into West Virginia,” he said. “We haven’t seen guidance on it yet as to how it’s going to be distributed.”
In other MUB news, the board approved a $194,000 contract with M&A Coatings, out of Pennsylvania, to paint the South Park High and Snake Hill No. 1 water storage tanks.
Lastly, board officers will remain unchanged in 2022 — J.T. Straface (chair), Barbara Parsons (vice chair), Karen Kunz (secretary) and Tom Witt (treasurer).
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