Governor Morrisey touring southern West Virginia to learn of water infrastructure issues
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Governor Patrick Morrisey is spending time this week in southern West Virginia getting a first-hand look at the area’s longtime water infrastructure issues.
Governor Morrisey touring southern West Virginia to learn of water infrastructure issues
Robert Fields | WVOW News
LOGAN In what the Governor called his “water listening tour,” he spent much of the day Tuesday visiting locations across Wayne, Mingo and Wyoming counties. On Wednesday, he says he's traveling to visit McDowell County before wrapping up his tour in Mercer County. In an interview with WVOW News, Morrisey said he’s wanting to hear directly from residents with regard to what water issues they’ve faced.
“The purpose of this tour is to really learn more firsthand of some of the challenges we face with our water supply because I know that we've been working aggressively to try to make improvements and in fact to put significant resources in,” Morrisey said. “All told over $550 million have gone in since I've been serving as governor, but I want to look and learn what's on the ground to make sure we're applying the resources most effectively and that means clean drinking water coming out of the pipes.”
Governor Morrisey said a lot of the process in building up that $550 million was just making things more efficient at the Capitol. He described scenarios where several groups would have their hands on a single project, creating a level of confusion around where money was coming from or being spent and essentially resulting in a traffic jam.
“We're trying to streamline all that and make it more efficient, more functional and more dollars going out to help water and sewer,” he said.
One of the big issues with getting help to these struggling water utilities has been communication, according to Morrisey. He said officials cannot know where to act if the proper avenues aren’t taken to make sure requests for assistance are submitted to who they need to reach. He said the goal of this tour has been to put those resources out there and get people connected with the proper channels.
“Well, we know that there are a lot of people that are looking at some of the systems that have been antiquated in the past. Some of these systems have been decades old and they rightfully want to have clean water and so what we've been doing is trying to make sure we're engaging locally and we're trying to talk with people to see what's going on, what are you doing about it,” Morrisey said.
“So, for example when I came in people were attacking saying what about Indian River that's something in Wyoming County and people said why haven't you fixed that. What we learned through the process is that local community never even submitted any information in the first place so therefore, it would have been improper to act, but when we got to the bottom of it we were able to communicate with the local community how to apply, how to address it and then they've started a process now and we've been spending a lot of time helping them, and at the end of the day there'll be significant dollars that go in, but there were a lot of complaints but they didn't realize that the locals had to act to make this happen and so we want to work with them and help explain how these processes work to maximize the amount of clean water that's in their communities.”
As the tour reached Mingo County, Morrisey was hearing concerns from local residents who say they don’t feel heard.
At a meeting in Williamson, one resident from Lenore said nothing is being done in Mingo County to help their water infrastructure. They said if money is being sent to the county, then an audit may be necessary to ensure the funding is going where it needs to go.
In Wyoming County, Morrisey met with residents in Oceana, where one resident alleged that testing of the local water supply revealed the presence of both prescription and non-prescription drugs in the water.
The Governor is still encouraging residents to contact his office to personally report water infrastructure issues. In order to contact the governor’s office, call 304-558-2000, or visit governor.wv.gov for other methods of contact. For issues specific to water infrastructure, Morrisey also recommended calling the West Virginia Water Development Authority in Charleston. The Water Development Authority can be reached by calling 304-414-6500 or by visiting wvwda.org.
“We want to hear about the problems on the ground, and we want to take action, right, that's the whole goal, but the state can't just come onto your property and immediately fix things,” said Morrisey.
“This has to be coordinated with the homeowners, with the local community who then they hire surveyors and engineers make sure, 'hey, this is what's needed in the community,' and then that positions us to take action, but what we've been doing is leveraging the back end of it so that the state can leverage with the federal government to make sure that at least our end of the process is going smoothly, but part of the reason to do this listening tour is to help educate people about the process because we want more clean water in people's communities,” he said.
Morrisey’s tour continues Wednesday. He’s expected to deliver some key findings from his tour during a meeting in Mercer County.
PHOTO | File