“How are you supposed to sell a house sitting next to a sewer plant,” Lee Terris asked Tuesday evening, standing just outside a conference room in The Cranberry hotel in Cheat Lake.
It was a rhetorical question.
“Cheaply,” he said. “That’s how.”
The Morgantown Utility Board held its regular monthly board meeting in Cheat Lake along with representatives of engineering firm Strand Associates to provide information about its plans for an estimated $28.7 million expansion of the Cheat Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant and Whites Run pumping station.
The meeting was likely more lively than anticipated as about two dozen residents showed up, some of whom have serious concerns about the proximity of the project to their homes.
If work moves forward as presented, the facility will be expanded onto a 12.7-acre property behind the existing plant and between Sunset Beach Road and the Chestnut Ridge Church parking lot.
Recognizing the steady population growth in the area, MUB purchased that land for $1.4 million in 2018.
Terris said he lives a stone’s throw from the church parking lot, in The Landings at Cheat.
“I don’t debate that for the good of the community it probably needs to be done, but as a resident who didn’t ask for this, are you buying my property at fair market value or what are you doing to keep us from getting crushed? Because nobody is going to want to live in my neighborhood, including me, by the way,” he said, adding, “This is a big deal.”
Jim Craig said his home will be just across Sunset Beach Road from the expanded plant.
“I guarantee it will not go for you smoothly because I’m not going to walk away quietly and I don’t expect other people in this room are going to do the same,” he said. “The property you’re going to have to purchase to satisfy the people in this room is going to exceed the value of your plant is my guess … The houses are not cheap out here.”
Scott Stearns, of Strand Associates, said the project is being engineered with every possible effort to control odor and hide the facility through the use of land contouring and privacy fencing.
In the end, Stearns said, the existing facility is exceeding 90% of its designed capacity and the number of customers using it has historically increased by an average of 3.75% annually.
“This plant is getting stressed. It’s reaching its designed limits,” he said. “It’s an elevator rated for 1,500 pounds and we’ve got 1,450 in it right now. That’s kind of where we’re at.”
Should MUB move forward, the project is likely at least two years away.
Board members said the kind of concerns voiced Tuesday were exactly why MUB scheduled the meeting in Cheat Lake.
“As a resident of this area, I’m very acutely aware of many of the issues that have been raised by participants tonight,” board member Tom Witt said. “I can assure you that this board, as I’m the only board member from this area, I will assure you these issues will be brought before the board so that we factor them in to our consultation.”
Tuesday’s meeting did not include any discussion of whether or not rate increases would come as a result of the proposed plant expansion.
