CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — The Harrison County Commission has offered resources in the effort to restore water to residents in West Milford who have gone without for roughly a week.
“Apparently, on the supply line, there was a major leak,” Commission President Ron Watson said. “It could not fill the demands of the town by [filling] a gravity-fed tank.”
The leak was found in the West Fork River after West Milford Mayor Todd Somers put on diving gear and pinpointed the line break, which he told the commission Thursday was approximately the size of a quarter.
While their only responsibility is providing the town’s purchased water to fill the tank, this particular repair in the river fell to the Greater Harrison PSD.
Bill Hoover, general manager of the PSD, said to keep costs manageable for the small operation, they were leasing the equipment and keeping labor in-house.
With this being the Labor Day weekend, the original plan was to postpone working on the project during the holiday and picking back up on Tuesday to avoid overtime costs.
At this point, the commission told Hoover they would be interested in helping out to speed up the process, especially because it will take three days for the reserve tank to fill.
“I think it was the consensus among the three commissioners that we would certainly entertain helping with labor costs so that they could work through this holiday weekend,” Watson said. “We also would find other resources for them from other PSDs that would come and help.”
The commission could not take any official action on the item because it was not on the agenda, but if the PSD does take them up on their offer they would take steps afterward to reimburse.
Though the repair is expected to restore water, it is not expected to resolve all of the town’s water issues.
With the system aging and not being regularly updated, more problems could be on the horizon.
“Apparently, there was really no kind of ongoing evaluation system,” Watson said. “In addition to that, it doesn’t appear that their revenues in their city that they had anything that was actually set back to take care of maintenance and upkeep.”
Somers indicated to the commission that they would being looking into setting up an emergency fund by putting away some of its revenues.