PSD and Commissioners Discuss Sewage Controversy

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="04b085a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>The Historic Sharp Farm's Preservation Blog</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Historic Sharp Farms Preservation Bl"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id61_m.html" TARGET="TRLX_Middle" TITLE="PSD and Commissioners Discuss Sewage Con"><U><B><IMG SRC="03b0e0e0.png" border=0 width="14" height="14" ALT="up" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id19.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chronos"><U><B><IMG SRC="03e0e0e0.png" border=0 width="14" height="14" ALT="down" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B>     </B><A HREF="id57.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Snowshoe May Sell Sewage Plant to Pocaho"><U><B><IMG SRC="02f0e0e0.png" border=0 width="14" height="14" ALT="previous" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B>  </B><A HREF="id60.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="PSD stalls on alternate site exploration"><U><B><IMG SRC="0300e0e0.png" border=0 width="14" height="14" ALT="next" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="04cd2e83.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="id87.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Challenges of 2005 2008 Eminent Domain "><U>Return To Challenges Log</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="04d07073.jpg"> <div> <I>PSD and Commissioners Discuss Sewage Controversy</I></div> <div> Thursday August 9, 2007 </div> <div> The Pocahontas Times</div> <bR> <div> Members of the Pocahontas County Public Service District and County Commission engaged in a wide ranging discussion last Tuesday of the controversial regional sewage plant planned for Slaty Fork.</div> <bR> <div> Throughout the meeting, PSD members appeared unswayed by the pleas of commissioner Martin Saffer and members of the public who asked the PSD to take a closer look at the environmental, social and economic impacts the plant will have on the resort area and the county as a whole.</div> <bR> <div> The PSD did not take its critics silently, however. Backed by those they have worked with closely on the project, including attorney Tom Michael, Thrasher Engineering's Dayton Carpenter and Region IV Planning and Development executive W.D. Smith, board members defended their rationale-and methods-in taking the path they have chosen.</div> <bR> <div> "You have to base your decisions on the facts and the task at hand," said PSD Treasurer Mark Smith, "I do feel for the people that are involved in this. I know that there are people who have this near and dear to their heart. I have spent many a night laying awake trying to figure a way to better handle this situation."</div> <bR> <div> Having grown up in the Slaty Fork area and now living and working there, PSD Secretary Scott Millican said he sees a real need for the regional facility that would be operated by the county.</div> <bR> <div> "Over the past ten years or so, Snowshoe has done a great job operating a ski resort, but they haven't done such a great job in the public works department," he said.</div> <bR> <div> Millican estimated the resort's current sewage facilities have had around 100 violations over the past ten years.</div> <div> "As a community member, I care about the water quality," said Millican. "I want them out of the damn business. They don't do a good job at it. We should be taking over the water, too."</div> <bR> <div> From a developer's standpoint, Millican said the regional facility would open up the valley to competition against the resort and it's "monopoly" on area business and development.</div> <bR> <div> Over the next ten years, Millican said he wanted to see the valley grow beyond the developments at the top of the mountain.</div> <bR> <div> "I want to see a school in the next ten years, a community center, a health facility," he said. "Those are the things my community needs."</div> <bR> <div> Whether the project is a county project or a project for a specific community was another source of debate at Tuesday's meeting.</div> <bR> <div> Millican said he sees it as a project for a specific community.</div> <bR> <div> Commissioners, however, were quick to acknowledge that the resort area pays more than 50 percent of the county's property taxes and around $800,000 in hotel/motel tax. Those sources of revenue support a wide range of services throughout the county, from law enforcement and emergency services to festivals and theater events.</div> <bR> <div> When the resort was seeking approval to build its own facility around 2002, Millican said he was frustrated that more people in the community did not get involved in the process.</div> <bR> <div> "If Snowshoe had gotten that, it would have been restraintive trade," Millican said. "It would forever have kept anyone from competing with them."</div> <bR> <div> Russell Holt was one of the area residents who did get involved and brought the resort's plans to a stop.</div> <bR> <div> "Everybody is worried about eminent domain," Holt said to those at Tuesday's meeting, "but no one's really concerned about Fifth Amendment rights of taking without due process [or] Fourteenth Amendment equal protection under the law, which means equal access to a public utility."</div> <bR> <div> Holt said he borrowed money to hire accounting and engineering firms and to hire an attorney who had once been a chairman of the West Virginia Public Service Commission.</div> <bR> <div> "I was not going to let my property rights be taken away from me," Holt said. "By token, I was defending everybody else's property rights."</div> <bR> <div> "The regional plant was set up as a solution to the problem," he continued. "Just as Mr. Millican has said, if you want Snowshoe to have a real estate monopoly, go ahead and let Snowshoe be Snowshoe, and no one else in the community will ever again be able to discharge waste into that creek out there, because there's not enough wasteload allocation."</div> <bR> <div> While Holt may have been guarding his property rights, members of Slaty Fork's Sharp family are fiercely defending their own in the face of the current plan. The PSD has its eye on a part of the family's land that lays along U.S. Route 219 for the location of the treatment plant itself.</div> <bR> <div> It's not the first time a government entity has sought land belonging to the family.</div> <bR> <div> "There's been three different times the government has taken property away from the Sharps," said family member Roger Sharp. "They took it away for the post office. They took it away for the railroad. They took it away for the highway. What other family in Pocahontas County has been asked four times to give up their land?"</div> <bR> <div> As the PSD continues with designing and building a regional facility, part of the project includes taking over the ailing system the resort was attempting to upgrade in 2002.</div> <bR> <div> Saffer, after talking with officials of the state Department of Environmental Protection, said he had serious concerns about taking over the resort's system and the potential liabilities the county may inherit.</div> <bR> <div> The resort currently has three sewage plants that serve Snowshoe, Silver Creek and the Inn at Snowshoe.</div> <div> Project planners have said necessary repairs to the system will be taken care of before the PSD takes ownership and will be paid for by the utility's customers.</div> <bR> <div> "Each facility has been temporarily upgraded," Saffer said, reading from a letter from DEP spokesperson Jessica Greathouse, "but all need to be either repaired or replaced to meet water quality standards."</div> <bR> <div> "That sounds to me like there is going to be more of a problem up there than can be handled by a quick fix and deftly passed on to the rate payers," Saffer said to the PSD.</div> <bR> <div> The nonprofit Eight Rivers Safe Development has recommended upgrading those facilities with "immersible membrane technology," and using decentralized "cluster systems" for developments in the valley below.</div> <bR> <div> Engineers from Thrasher met with Eight Rivers president George Philips to discuss his group's concerns about the plant's impact on water quality and the cave systems in the area.</div> <bR> <div> Speaking publicly for the first time since that meeting, Thrasher's Dayton Carpenter was largely dismissive of Eight Rivers' proposal and concerns, saying there is "absolutely no reason to put in membrane filtration," to meet the DEP's water quality requirements.</div> <bR> <div> "It's far in excess of what we need to do," Carpenter said. "In fact, the treatment plant that we're putting in not only meets the limits that are required, but it's even more than that."</div> <bR> <div> With the addition of filters from Snowshoe's facilities, Carpenter said the regional plant would be able to meet water quality standards well into the future.</div> <bR> <div> For those concerned about overdevelopment in the resort area, Carpenter said the Big Spring Fork's capacity of 1.5 million gallons per day of treated wastewater would be the "limiting factor to growth in the resort area."</div> <bR> <div> As for the concerns about the caves in the karst, limestone area, Carpenter said people build and live in similar areas all over the country. Engineers at Thrasher have been satisfied with the results of geologic tests done on the stability of the site of the plant and along the main pipeline, he added.</div> <bR> <div> PSD attorney Tom Michael said the board had taken similar measures to assess the plant's environmental impact, hiring a trout specialist and geologist and studying the Elk River crayfish and endangered Indiana Bat.</div> <bR> <div> "All of this occurred long before Mr. Philips came along with his wonderful presentation," Michael said. "To say we did not do an environmental study is absolutely false."</div> <bR> <div> "I think this board ought to get some credit for what it's done, instead of getting constantly attacked," he said.</div> <bR> <div> Philips was not ready to concede any credit, however, noting that the PSD used a two-year-old bat study that was conducted for the resort's golf course. The PSD also failed to address temperature concerns for Big Spring Fork's trout until Trout Unlimited and other groups hired an independent contractor to look at the issue. Philips also attacked Thrasher's knowledge of the geology of the area as being limited and said the geological tests that were performed were flawed.</div> <bR> <div> Philips got some support from representatives of Snowshoe homeowners who were at the meeting.</div> <bR> <div> "We want the Eight Rivers plan to be considered very seriously," said Donelle Oxley, Vice President of the Snowshoe Property Owners Council. "Only if it's not a viable option should we consider something else."</div> <bR> <div> Oxley said her group was as concerned about the environmental impact of the project as much as the impact it will have on monthly sewer bills.</div> <bR> <div> Ultimately, those higher bills could hurt the area economy as property owners are forced to increase their rental fees and fewer resort visitors stay overnight.</div> <bR> <div> In addition to hurting hotel/motel tax revenues, the effect could trickle down the mountain, affecting local grocers, gas stations and other businesses.</div> <bR> <div> Oxley said she was also frustrated by the attitude that resort property owners can afford to foot the bill for the plant.</div> <div> "We're not absentee owners," she said. "We're not second home owners. In my case, I'm a retired school teacher. The only home I own is up there. I live there full-time. I'm a voting member of the county, and I think it's a shame that it's come to all this and that the homeowners are treated with such disrespect."</div> <bR> <div> Other critics of the project have said the whole controversy is a symptom of the absence of any county planning.</div> <bR> <div> Cass resident Bill Liebman urged the commissioners to be more active in managing growth in the resort area.</div> <bR> <div> "The county commission has an obligation to itself and the community to plan how to properly manage growth," Liebman said. "Growth is inevitable, but it can be managed. Unfortunately, that isn't being done right now. Everybody can take responsibility for that."</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>