Tempers Flare at PSD Meeting

Wednesday July 23, 2008

Pamela Pritt
Editor

Last Wednesday night’s Pocahontas Public Service District meeting saw outraged Snowshoe property owners and valley residents alike raise voices, make accusations and ask for PSD board member removal, but little progress in finding a final home for the embattled Slaty Fork Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Property owners at the resort said they did not want to subsidize a regional plant which would serve the 1800-plus full- and part-time residents on the mountain and few residents in the valley.

Mark Pancione said he believed that with a price tag of about $25 million, the plant was the equivalent of “the fleecing of people who don’t live here by people who do.”

Snowshoe Mountain Resort was poised to build its own plant several years ago when a valley property owner, Russell Holt, campaigned for a regional facility because the resort would use the allowable stream degradation in the Elk River. Holt said Wednesday his push for the regional plant was met with “apathy” by other valley residents then.

In 2003, the Public Service Commission approved building the regional facility, which met with no objection at a public hearing held at the courthouse in Marlinton.

However, when a portion of the Sharp Family Farm was chosen for the site and eminent domain became a companion phrase for the site itself, public sentiment soured on the project. Sharp family member Tom Shipley contested the location on many fronts until February when the PSD conceded and began to look at three other sites.

Of those three, two are “buildable,” according to Thrasher Engineering’s Ken Moran. One, Site 7, is on Snowshoe property, the other, Site 5, is the state-owned Railway Authority property.

In June, Moran estimated the total cost for construction on Site 5 would be in the range of $30.3 to $31.9 million, with operations and maintenance costs of $1.15 to $1.3 million. For Site 7, the total cost would range from $25.5 to $27.2 million, with operations and maintenance costs of $1.09 to $1.2 million, he said.

Moran defended the costs of the regional plant, noting that replacement costs, as well as several options like cooling towers and membrane filters, were included in the figures.

He also said that under certain conditions, valley residents would not be required to hook on to a pipeline. If the pipeline is pressurized, he said, then residents would have the option to hook on; however, if a gravity line is installed, then hooking on becomes mandatory.

Eight Rivers Safe Development founder George Phillips offered another alternative.

Phillips suggested enlarging the sewage treatment facility at Silver Creek and gravity feeding sewage from the top of the mountain. The plant would discharge into the Shavers Fork, freeing up all the allowable stream degradation in the Elk, he said.

In addition, he said, the Elk Headwaters Association would be given time to finalize its comprehensive watershed plan and work on alternative sewage treatment options and sites.

While Phillips could not provide a cost estimate for this proposal, he did say one up front savings would be the cost of pipe from Snowshoe Mountain Resort to a regional plant in the valley. The plan would also include forming a second PSD to manage the resort’s system.

“We all want the resort to fix its problem,” said Elk River Touring owner Gil Willis. “We’re all in the tourism business. If this plant is not done precisely right we’ll ruin the reason people come here. If we ruin what we have, we have nothing.”

But Willis said the project’s history showed that Thrasher’s work was not “up to par” until it began looking at alternative sites.

“There’s been a lot of horrible research from the beginning,” he said.

“We want to help you,” Willis told the PSD. “But we’re going to have to have leadership.”

PSD members once called a recess because of the animosity in the room, but it wasn’t until PSD secretary Scott Millican made a motion to select Site 5 that the room erupted. The PSD’s other members, Bill Rexrode and Mark Smith, had begun the meeting by agreeing they weren’t ready to make the choice just yet.

“I’ve talked to engineers for hours,” Millican said. “That’s my decision. The horse is dead, folks.”

“It’s the most expensive ,” Fairley Workman, a Slaty Fork Farms resident said, also noting it was the farthest from the resort.

And Shipley, who in the begining of his crusade to save his farm, often invoked available state property as a viable alternative, also spoke out against Site 5.

He said later that was not inconsistent with his previous position.

Shipley said the state property he’d suggested was on the west side of the river and out of the karst formation.

“I don’t think we were ever trying to put it on the state railway authority property,” he said.

“No one is saying let’s do nothing,” Shipley said in a subsequent email. “We are all working hard to find solutions that will serve everyone and protect this wonderful place.”

Millican’s motion died for lack of a second, but the motion to adjourn was quickly agreed upon.

Millican stayed after the meeting to talk to several property owners individually.

Snowshoe homeowner Bruce Wessel said he believed the PSD members should be removed from their appointed positions.

PSD members are appointed by the county commission and can be removed for reasonable cause by a petition to the circuit court. Reasonable cause may include failure to attend meetings, failure to diligently pursue the board’s objectives, failure to perform any other duty or for any malfeasance of public office, according to West Virginia State Code.