BLACKSVILLE, W.Va. — Sanitary sewer issues in Blacksville are testing the town council and state and local leaders are stepping in to lend a hand.
Del. Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, said he and the Monongalia County Commission are doing what they can to help town leaders find the money needed to diagnose and fix the problems.
“We need to find some funding to help them out because a small community like that can’t always absorb that cost,” Statler said on WAJR’s “Talk of the Town.” “They’re working on their issues within, and now with the Monongalia County Commission, I’ve been working to try to help them out.”
“That’s never a good thing because sometimes it goes into people’s yards, and pumps can shut down—there’s a series of pumps they rely on, and the school system is actually connected,” Statler said.
The largest customers of the sewer district are the two schools—Mason Dixon Elementary School and Clay-Battelle High School. School officials have agreed to begin pumping their holding tanks to relieve the system of that volume.
“They agreed to and are pumping their holding tanks to make sure they’re doing everything they can to help the city out to make sure this doesn’t give them a problem,” Statler said.
The heavy rains from earlier this summer magnified the problems. Officials said the storms raised the possibility there could be an infiltration into the system causing further problems—more evidence that a study to identify the scope of the problem would be the likely next step.
The network serving the residents was built in 1993. Statler said the study will help them understand how to provide the best fix as well as identify portions of the system that could be upgraded.
“Systems from 1993 are engineered differently than they probably would be today. How do you fix some of the problems? How do you locate the problems? That all takes money to see how the system can be upgraded,” Statler said.
Story by Mike Nolting, WAJR