MORGANTOWN — The Morgantown Utility Board plans to take its show on the road this March.
Or, put another way, it’ll hold a board meeting in Cheat Lake.
During MUB’s most-recent regular meeting, General Manager Mike McNulty said the utility has scheduled its March 14 meeting for The Cranberry Hotel, in Cheat Lake, in order to roll out preliminary plans for an expansion of the Cheat Lake wastewater treatment plant.
McNulty said MUB is currently reviewing the engineering report provided for the project by engineering and design firm Strand Associates.
The plant, at 166 Sunset Beach Road, was originally built in 1984 with a capacity of 250,000 gallons per day.
MUB took over operation of the plant in 1998 and launched a complete overhaul as part of a $10.3 million system upgrade. At that time, capacity was expanded to 750,000 gallons per day and sewer service was extended to more than 1,500 customers in the Cheat Lake area through new interceptors.
Recognizing the steady population growth in that area, MUB spent $1.4 million in 2018 to purchase 12.7 acres adjacent to the plant property.
In a report to the board in January 2022, McNulty said the plant was operating at capacity.
“The growth out there is tremendous. It’s exploding, actually, is probably the best way to put it,” he said at the time.
In other MUB news, the utility is hoping the West Virginia Division of Highways doesn’t take issue with its remodeling plans.
In July 2022, the utility hired Omni Architects for $249,000 to design renovations to MUB’s Green Bag Road office building.
McNulty said an internal review of those plans was underway when correspondence arrived from the DOH.
“In the meantime we received DOH road construction plans for the upgrades here on Green Bag and the new roundabouts they’re going to install. We need to get those to Omni to make sure they’re not going to interfere because they are going to come over and encroach onto us. We want to make sure their ideas will all fit,” he said.
The Roads to Prosperity Green Bag Road project is estimated at $19 million — including $3 million in right-of-way improvements in fiscal year 2024 and $16 million in intersection construction in fiscal year 2025.
It will impact 1.65 miles of Green Bag Road between Napa Auto Parts and Aarons Creek Road and will include a widening of Green Bag Road, as well as roundabouts at the intersections of Green Bag Road and Mississippi Street and Green Bag Road and Kingwood Pike/Dorsey Avenue.
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