MORGANTOWN — On July 8 — already days into what would become a weeks-long water delivery emergency for the Clinton Water Association — the Morgantown Utility Board was approached about the possibility of acquiring the association.
According to MUB, Clinton Water Association Board President Alan Wise initiated that meeting.
“Alan Wise contacted MUB on July 8 requesting a meeting at our office. During that meeting, held the afternoon of July 8, the possibility of MUB acquiring the Clinton Water Association was discussed in very general terms,” MUB Communications Director Chris Dale said. “The next day we learned that when the matter was put before the Clinton Water Association Board of Directors, it failed.”
According to information obtained by The Dominion Post, the issue never actually made it to a vote.
The Clinton Water Association Board of Directors did meet July 8 and convened in executive session, during which Wise ended up resigning his position on the board.
Wise did not respond to requests for comment in time for this report.
The Clinton Water Association delivery issues started bubbling up at the tail end of June, but began in earnest July 3, when some customers in the CWA service area woke to find little-to-no water available heading into the holiday weekend.
Over the next two weeks, association members experienced stretches of no service, low pressure, boil water advisories and conservation advisories, meaning essential use only.
All the while, personnel with CWA and Carline Hauling and Excavation — which signed a contract with the association in June to take on emergency repairs — began trying to run down the problem with assistance from various local and state agencies.
Patrick Kirby with Carline Hauling and Excavating said a number of small leaks were detected in the early going, but nothing that would cause customers to go without water.
It wasn’t until July 14, Kirby explained, that an issue was detected with the overflow system of a non-metered tank sitting on private property. Because of where the tank is located, the spillage wasn’t detected until a visible amount of water had accumulated.
“There was no way to quickly identify it. It was on private property behind a fence. Based on the size of the pipe and the speed at which the water was coming out, once we got that closed on the 14th, the levels went back up pretty fast after that,” Kirby said. “If it’s going down over a hill on private property and it’s not facing anything public or anywhere people would have access to, how would you notice it until it gets to a point where it’s saturating and becomes more visible.”
During this time, the additional strain on the CWA system highlighted the deteriorated capacity in the association’s Atwood Pump Station, which it immediately moved to address by sending one of the two pumps off for repairs.
Operations Manager Kristi Dalton said the repaired pump was returned Friday and will be reinstalled early next week, once its rented replacement is retrieved. The association is also considering the purchase of a new pump for the station, which pulls in water purchased from MUB and pushes it out to customers.
Pressure issues at that exchange are a known issue.
In the fiscal year 2025 West Virginia Drinking Water Treatment Revolving Fund Intended Use Plan, a $2.1 million project was submitted by CWA to address the problem.
The plan states, “Clinton Water was informed by Morgantown Utility Board of upcoming capital improvement projects that would reduce pressures going to the Clinton System. Clinton has been having issues with the Atwood Pump Station losing adequate suction pressure already and causing low pressures on the Route 73 branch of their system.”
The proposed project, which was ultimately ranked 49th out of the 160 projects submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, would construct a new storage tank that would allow “Clinton to control their own pressure throughout the system instead of relying on Morgantown Utility Board’s pressures.”
Dale said reducing water pressure to CWA isn’t the focus of any upcoming MUB project, but may be a result of the forthcoming plan to replace and improve the 50-plus-year-old high service pump station at MUB’s water treatment facility on Don Knotts Boulevard.
“One of the goals of the pump house project, which we hope to enter the design phase of this year, is to reduce the amount of time each day that our high service pumps are actively pumping. While the reduced runtime should lower electricity consumption, there is a possibility that it could slightly lower the overall pressure of the water leaving the treatment plant,” he said. “The Clinton Water Association has been informed of this possibility.”
