Community

Ground broken for East Fairmont water mitigation project

FAIRMONT - The ceremonial shovels came out Tuesday on Fairmont's East Side, and they carried more than dirt.

City officials say sidewalks, streets, yards and basements will be a lot drier for generations to come - even as the skies continue to let go.

Ground was broken for a $17.4 million stormwater remediation project on Morgantown Avenue, a mixed-use thoroughfare of homes and businesses that was particularly swamped during the Father's Day flooding of 2025.

The deluge also caused the partial collapse across town of Fairmont Village Apartments, which is right across the street from Fairmont State University on Locust Avenue.

Meanwhile, Morgantown Avenue has long been plagued by flooding - low-level and otherwise, City Manager Travis Blosser said - as a meteorological byproduct of the heavy rains that are common to north-central West Virginia during the spring and summer.

"There are people in this neighborhood who have been waiting a very long time," Blosser said.

"Some have watched water come onto their property and some have dealt with repeated flooding," the administrator continued, referencing weather patterns of late which many attribute to the effects of climate change.

"They've been patient. Today, I want them to hear that the work is starting."

And the work, he said, addresses industrial and environmental issues here that are more profound, the city manager said, than stormwater runoff in a downpour.

The entirety of the $17.4 million grant comes courtesy of the Abandoned Mine Lands arm of the state Department of Environmental Resources.

Bridgeport's Thrasher Group will manage the day-to-day of the operation once work begins.

AML is involved, Blosser said, because the portal of the now-tapped Consolidation Coal Co. Mine 57 was located on a rise overlooking Morgantown Avenue. The mine opened in 1927.

While the coal is long gone, the abandoned passages and fissures of the mine are still generating an unwelcome byproduct, nearly 100 years later, Blosser said.

Acid mine drainage.

The polluted, acidic water runoff has caused the storm drainage infrastructure on Morgantown Avenue to deteriorate, the city manager continued - as it wasn't designed to withstand the corrosive effects of the drainage.

Large-scale stormwater management projects are becoming more common in the city.

Other work is set to commence along the aforementioned Locust Avenue.

The city has entered a partnership with Fairmont State University and First Exchange Bank, a local financial chain located in Mannington, Marion County, to demolish the ruined apartment building and two other blighted structures close by.

Drainage systems would be upgraded with additional plans to build a gathering space that could benefit both the campus community and surrounding neighborhood, the city and university said.

Down the road in the White Hall community just past south Fairmont, the Abandoned Mine Lands division is also investigating an underground coal seam fire that has been simmering for decades.