The Mon Valley Green Space Coalition, in association with the City of Morgantown, the Monongalia Morgantown Municipal Planning Organization, the West Virginia Land Trust and Mon River Trails Conservancy, has designed a conceptual map of a Morgantown greenbelt in hopes it will spark a groundswell to realize the project.
The greenbelt would link greenspaces, including city parks, the rail-trail and other public recreational areas around and connecting to areas within Morgantown.
Parts of the greenbelt are already in place, but a concerted effort will be needed to realize the project. The entities associated with the map hope it will inspire local leaders and members of the community to work to complete the greenbelt by April 30, 2030 — the 60th anniversary of Earth Day.
There are numerous reasons a greenbelt would benefit the greater Morgantown community, including:
- Morgantown traffic is notoriously bad. A connected trail system in the city would offer the community a safer way to commute to work and school or otherwise move around the city.
- Automobiles contribute to poor air quality in the community and higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Connected green routes would mitigate the ill effects of pollution (which can cause and/or exacerbate asthma and other respiratory illnesses) and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- The establishment of green routes would encourage walking, hiking and biking — healthy outdoor recreation and exercise. Recreational outlets are crucial to the wellbeing of the city, which, like the rest of the state, suffers from high rates of obesity and diabetes.
- Turbulence overseas, most recently Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, creates unnerving fluctuations in oil prices (and therefore gasoline prices). Traveling to work or elsewhere via a greenbelt is essentially free.
- A Morgantown Greenbelt would be a boon to the local economy. If Morgantown’s greenbelt is like greenbelts in other communities, including Boise, Idaho, and Cleveland, Ohio, it will: increase tourism and visitor spending; provide stormwater infiltration; reduce pollution costs; yield medical-cost savings because of better health outcomes; and raise the values of local homes. The benefits would be in the millions of dollars.
Many of the greenspaces a Morgantown greenbelt would require are already in place, including the rail-trail, Marilla Park and White Park, as well as Airport Park, a recent West Virginia Land Trust acquisition. There are, however, “missing links” — properties the city does not currently own or control — in the Morgantown Greenbelt. The City of Morgantown could purchase and/or negotiate with the landowners to acquire permanent rights-of-way through these properties.
Construction of a Morgantown greenbelt can be inexpensive. The city has a number of tools it can use to lower the cost of building a greenbelt, including offering tax incentives to land owners, securing federal, state and private grants, and using money available from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which provides municipalities with incentives to build green infrastructure.
