MORGANTOWN – The Morgantown Utility Board is hopeful it can begin addressing the underlying issues destabilizing the ground beneath a portion of the Patteson Drive Burger King parking lot as soon as August.
During its most recent regular meeting, the board approved a $1,003,486 contract with Insight Pipe to clean and rehabilitate 700 feet of the 96-inch culvert running through the area.
Part of the fast-food chain’s lot has been cordoned off with orange cones since June 2025, when a customer vehicle began sinking into the ground.
MUB Assistant General Manager Rich Rogers previously said the ground is being destabilized by separations at each of the culvert’s joints.
The work is part of a second phase of improvements addressing the Popenoe Run watershed.
A $3.28 million project jointly funded by MUB, the city of Morgantown and Monongalia County, included new sewer and stormwater infrastructure, as well as about 3,000 feet of stream restoration, along the stream’s upper portion. That work was completed last fall.
In March, MUB approved a $72,000 task order for the Thrasher Group to compile a preliminary engineering report and a hydraulic study of lower Popenoe Run, running primarily along Patteson Drive between the WVU Alumni Center and Krepps Park.
While addressing the eight-foot culvert will be a significant portion of the lower Popenoe work, it won’t be the entire project.
It’s likely there will also need to be some stream restoration and other infrastructure improvements.
“Yes. We still have to address that. We’re still waiting. We have some questions back to Thrasher, and we’ll be waiting on their final report, but this will get at least that [culvert] portion of the project completed,” MUB General Manager Mike McNulty said. “We want to get out of their parking lot and get it back in business.”
According to McNulty, Insight Pipe has indicated they could have a crew available to start, “as early as August.”
“It would be about a one-to-two month project once they get in to start the work,” he said.
Funding for the project will come from the roughly $1.77 million remaining sewer project bonds issued in 2016.
