MORGANTOWN — As of Friday morning, it had been about a week since the last rainfall in Morgantown, and yet a significant pool of water stood at the corner of Stewart Street and Idlewood Drive.
“This is all the time now,” Shorty Anderson Auto Service co-owner Shawn Rowan said. “Better there than in the shop, I guess, but it’s in the shop all the time, too. Pretty much every time it rains.”
Shawn owns the garage, attached apartments and adjacent storage facilities with his brother, Travis.
Both men are standing near the oversized puddle. They point out the ditch the water has carved along their side of Idlewood. A few feet away, boards lay across a sink hole — probably three-foot square — just off the edge of their parking area.
The brothers were incredulous to learn the Morgantown Utility Board has found their demand for $150,000 to give MUB a permanent easement across their property unreasonable.
The easement is tied to the forthcoming Upper Popenoe Run stormwater, sanitary sewer and stream restoration project.
“You want to see unreasonable,” Travis asks, heading to the garage’s back door. “Let’s take a little walk.”
He points up the hill behind the shop to Manchester Place Rental Community, a complex of townhouses and apartment buildings.
“When our pipes were put in the ground in the 80s, there was nothing back there. Yet, they came in and are dumping all that water through our pipe. So, for the past three years, every time it rains we get flooded. Everybody knew it was coming. Why didn’t they have to pay to upgrade the infrastructure?” Travis said.
“MUB, the DEP, the planning commission all signed off on these developments behind us and they approved it knowing the infrastructure could not handle it. They did this knowing our pipe wouldn’t carry all that water.”
Both the business and neighboring development fall in the county’s West Run Planning District, just outside Morgantown’s boundaries.
“Probably 10 years ago, our uncle wanted to take out some of these storage units and put in six townhouses. The planning commission told him no; said the infrastructure couldn’t handle the water. Now, we have this,” Shawn said.
MUB has said the cost to upgrade the business’ private system is about $309,000 of the Popenoe Run project’s $3.22 million price tag.
During Wednesday’s MUB meeting, it was explained the utility would cut that work out of the project if the Rowans don’t provide the easement. In return, MUB would offer $2,800 and pave the business’ parking area.
“That’s what really bothers me. That’s my problem with all of this. They act like they’re doing us a favor. They’re not upgrading our property. They’re fixing a problem they created,” Travis said.
MUB General Manager Mike McNulty said the utility would rather not settle the matter in court through condemnation.
“They know what’s gone on here,” Shawn said. “I think they know they would have to pay if they did that.”
According to the Rowans, the construction would not only severely impact the amount of work they could take on, but it would eliminate parking for themselves and their tenants for up to three weeks.
Further, it would scrap plans the brothers have to expand the garage to be able to accommodate larger vehicles as they won’t be able to build over the easement.
But, Shawn says, there’s more.
The brothers walk across Stewart Street to a storm drop at its intersection with Kingston Drive. It’s full to the surface with gravel and debris.
They walk a few feet to the nearby stormwater ditch. It’s almost completely filled in, and weeds are growing out of the accumulated soil and rocks.
“You see how this is being maintained. We’ve asked them to clean this out. So when it rains, the water from this side ends up right at our front door. So, we basically have water flowing in from three sides,” Travis said.
“They make it sound like we’re greedy and we’re looking for money. That’s not the case at all. Paving is not going to compensate for weeks of impact to our business and it won’t compensate for the three years of flooding we’ve dealt with because everybody looked the other way and signed off on all this development back here.”
The brothers said they’re not standing in the way of progress, and they don’t believe their request is unreasonable.
Shawn said everybody remembers the 100-year floods in 2021, which occurred after the land for Manchester Place had been cleared. Feet of water ran down into the garage. The business was closed for days and five vehicles were totaled.
What they don’t realize, he continued, is that the flooding never stopped.
“We’re a small business. Three years ago, when we got flooded, we just about lost everything. It’s still affecting us. And to this day, we’re just trying to keep our heads above water,” he said. “We lose sleep over this. This is our livelihood.”
Clarification
In Thursday’s report on MUB’s Upper Popenoe Run project, it was stated that the water that destroys the portion of Stewart Street in front of Shorty Anderson Auto Service would be remedied through upgrades to the business’ private system as part of the larger project.
That is not the case.
In March, MUB told The Dominion Post there are multiple factors at work.
One is groundwater that continues to push up through the asphalt despite work in recent years from the DOH, with assistance from MUB, to install and improve an underdrain system.
“The second issue is that the stormwater ditch along Stewart Street obviously needs regraded to increase its capacity. Currently, this is not possible because of a sanitary sewer pipe that runs just beneath the ditch surface. So, increasing the depth of the ditch is not currently possible,” MUB Communications Director Chris Dale explained at the time.
Replacement of that section of sewer line is not included in MUB’s forthcoming Popenoe Run sanitary and stormwater project, which basically runs from Shorty Anderson’s to the stadium parking lot side of Willowdale Road.
Dale said the pipe running down Stewart Street can’t be replaced at a greater depth until the Popenoe Run project is completed.
