MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Following two significant rain events in Morgantown MUB is asking for the city and county commission to share the cost of repairs to portions of the Popenoe Run storm and sanitary sewer systems.
On June 13, rainfall totals of up to six inches in a matter of hours flooded homes and businesses. The rain flooded Patteson Drive leaving some motorists stranded.
The, July 29 a similar significant rain event hit the same area again.
“We had another extremely isolated deluge rain event that dropped anywhere from 4 to over 6 inches of rain in about three hours time,” Hacker said.
According to Hacker, the storm water system performed as it should have. However, the amount of rain was well over the design parameters of the system.
Improvements to the system would help prevent flooding during historic rain events.
“The sanitary sewer system needs to be upgraded and we would do a stream restoration project,” Hacker said,” That would put back a flood bench and create a flood plain and stabilize the stream banks.”
The rules for spending money provided to municipalities through the American Rescue Plan place a priority on water and sewer infrastructure projects. The city of Morgantown will receive more than $11 million while the county will receive more than $20 million.
” We’ve asked for a little more than $2 million to assist with the project- you can imagine something like that is quite expensive,” Hacker said,” The recent events that we’ve had really show the project is needed in the area.”
The Monongalia County commission has agreed to support the project.
The city of Morgantown has pledged to help, but made it clear no allocation decisions will be made until the public input phase about the funds is complete. The city has an online survey period for residents until August 21. Public meetings are planned for August 18 and September 1. A final list of priorities could be released by the middle of September.
The Popenoe Run storm and sanitary sewer system improvement project would be completed by a private contractor. Work to development plans for bidding and permits to complete the work would not begin until the project financing is in place.
” A design phase and a permitting phase that would follow that,” Hacker said, Any kind of stream project requires quite a bit a permitting that can take time to achieve.”