MORGANTOWN — Preliminary estimates from the Morgantown Utility Board indicate more than $13 million in water and sewer upgrades are needed to support continued development in WestRidge and the larger Chaplin Hill area.
MUB Director of Communications Chris Dale said the construction of a new water tank, a booster station and the boring of new water and sewer lines beneath the Monongahela River are among the major improvements needed.
“A more detailed project estimate will be available after the developers commit to funding the final design services,” Dale said, noting that design package will likely be in the $670,000 range.
Dale said MUB has applied for a Congressionally Directed Spending grant, or earmark, through Senator Shelley Moore Capito’s office for project funding and is exploring potential loan and grant opportunities through the West Virginia Water Development Authority.
While MUB is seeking outside funds for the project, “Our business model has always been that developers fund necessary upgrades that benefit their projects,” Dale said. “This is in keeping with the idea that residential customers should not pay for projects benefiting developers.”
Members of the Monongalia County Commission have said they are working with both MUB and the developers on financing solutions.
According to Dale, the estimated project timeline would be about 18 months from the funding of the design component.
But water and sewer upgrades are not the only infrastructure changes needed to support future development in that area.
The long-coveted overhaul of I-79 Exit 155 appears to be stuck in a holding pattern.
Dale said those two things are in no way connected.
“The work necessary to upgrade the water and sewer facilities in the Chaplin Hill area has nothing to do with the Exit 155 project. They are entirely independent projects,” he explained.
When that question was put to the West Virginia Division of Highways, information from Deputy State Highway Engineer Jason Foster indicated only that the DOH continues to have conversations with a private developer [WestRidge] and the Monongalia County Commission and that the state isn’t ready to schedule the project for construction.
The timeline and cost of the new interchange — a divergent diamond design with a westbound flyover — has been a moving target since preliminary work began in 2019.
At that time, the cost was estimated at $66 million, with construction to begin as soon as 2020. In January 2020, it was projected work would likely begin sometime in 2021. In 2021, costs were bumped closer to $80 million and the state stopped providing construction timelines.
In a May 2021 letter to Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Executive Director Bill Austin and then MMPO Policy Board Chairman Tom Bloom, West Virginia Secretary of Transportation Byrd White said delays were not coming from the state’s end.
It was also around that time the project was removed from the WVDOT’s Roads to Prosperity project list and placed into the queue for federal funds.
Asked earlier this month about the current cost and status of the interchange, the DOH responded “The final details of the project have not been developed and the project is not currently scheduled.”
