MORGANTOWN — Typically, River Road news in April or May involves a timeline explaining when the West Virginia Division of Highways hopes to get the road reopened following the latest slide.
That was certainly the case last spring, when a section of hillside broke loose following heavy rains in early April, temporarily closing the lower section of the road between U.S. 19 near the Joseph Bartolo Memorial (Westover) Bridge and the intersection of DuPont and Industrial Park roads.
At the time, DOH District 4 personnel indicated a “permanent fix” was in the works.
On Wednesday, District 4 Manager Earl Gaskins confirmed help is on the way, but it’s not going to be quick or easy.
In fact, he added, the engineering and right-of-way drawings alone have been years in the making.
“The Morgantown side – DuPont [Road] down to the Joseph Bartolo Bridge – we’ve got a lot of slips in a lot of areas there. So, we contracted the plans out – the engineering drawings and all that – and now we’ve got everything back. We’re in the process of acquiring right-of-way. That’s going to be a lengthy process because there are a lot of property owners. But we have the funding set aside, we have the right-of-way plans approved and we’re working on getting that process started.”
That short, lower section of River Road is a longstanding problem.
In April 2018, a massive slide forced the evacuation of a home and sent several trees and many tons of hillside across the pavement about 150 yards below Lockside Road.
That all occurred while DOH personnel were nearby repairing another section of displaced hillside.
The route was ultimately closed for about a year and a half, during which the DOH located some 20 active slides along the 1.27-mile stretch. Estimates from the state indicated it would likely take about $6 million (in 2018 dollars) to stabilize.
DOH and local officials actively spoke of permanently closing the road to through traffic, but the DOH ultimately chose to reopen it in September 2019 after monitoring the hillside for approximately 500 days.
“Something like that is an absolute last resort. That’s the last thing we’d want to do,” Gaskins said of closing roads. “I want to try to get everything up and bring everything up to standard and make it safe for travel. It’s a high-volume road and it’s used a lot and it’s key to industry there and key to the economy. It’s definitely a high priority. It’s just going to be very time-consuming.”
While there doesn’t currently seem to be any weight restriction in place, Gaskins said the recommendation is that heavy traffic use another route.
Potholes aside, it’s clear when driving lower River Road that the pavement is not a smooth, flat surface, but undulating with the underlying soil.
Even so, it’s a common route for tractor-trailers traveling to and from the Morgantown Industrial Park.
Gaskins said he’s hopeful that the new industrial park access road and bridge will pull those trucks off the slide-prone road. That project is currently estimated for a winter 2026 completion.
As the lengthy process to address the road’s short lower section plays out, the DOH plans to begin addressing the Arnettsville end of the road with a slide remediation project in 2026. That work will be followed by a paving project.
“We’re trying to look at the whole road as one unit. We’re trying to get everything taken care of, but we’ve got to do it in sections,” he said. “We’re trying to get something moving. I know that you guys have been told that many times, but I will tell you that we are actively moving on it.”
