Pocahontas PSD Contracts With Potest Engineering For Stream Studies

Durbin, WV – Contracts approved by the Pocahontas County Public Service District board Tuesday night will save them a lot of money on water sampling. The board approved two contracts with Potesta Engineering for metals translator studies at the Snowshoe Village and Silver Creek sewage facilities.

Potesta will train PSD staff on how to take water samples for testing at a cost of $18,420.00 for the two areas. If Potesta staff did the sampling, it would cost the PSD well over $41,000.00. Dr. Eli McCoy, of Potesta, says the PSD should know after the two or three samples have been done whether or not it’s worth the board’s time and effort to continue the sampling.

Board member David Litsey offers another option for keeping metals out of the streams near the sewage facilities – a polishing wetland.

“Essentially a polishing wetland is a vegetative mass over a channel that is dug into the ground and lined; filled with media such as limestone, sand and whatnot” says Litsey. “And then has vegetative material sitting on top which have an affinity for copper, iron. That would be one way that we could reduce our soluble copper and other items down to a level that would not affect our streams.”

He already has a piece of land in mind for the wetland. Litsey says he’s talked to a landowner who has an almost 13 acre parcel of land just down the road from the Silver Creek sewer plant. The parcel is owned by the Mace Knob Land Company. He says the landowner has offered to sell the land at a cost of $7000.00 per acre. After further discussion, Litsey offered a letter of intent for an option to buy the land.

“It is the intent of the Public Service Distric of Pocahontas County to enter into a option agreement with Mace Knob Land Company in the total amount of $90,000.00 for the purchase of 12.67 acres” says Litsey. “Pending the approval of the West Virginia Public Service Commission format and payment schedule; and we would like to that with you.”

Once approved by the WV PSC, the option requires a down payment of $10,000.00. A motion to present the land option proposal to the WV PSC passed unanimously.

In other business, Sewer Manager Lloyd Coleman presented his 2011 Capital Improvement plan to the board. The biggest ticket item on the list is a vacuum truck used to haul sewage from the smaller package plants around Snowshoe. Coleman says it would cost around $110,000.00 to replace the current truck. The board took no action on the improvement list other than to ask Coleman to provide quotes for the less expensive items.

The board also discussed the PSD website. Assistant manager Heidi Hickson asked the PSD board members what they’d like to see on the site. PSD Chairman Tom Shipley suggested a homepage with listings of meeting times and dates, a page for PSD policies and a page for the minutes of past meetings. Litsey also suggested adding project updates to the site. Shipley says they need to create a protocol for board approval of items for the website. The current website can be found at www.pocahontascountypsd.com.

The next meeting of the Pocahontas Public Service District board is a special meeting on April 6th at the Snowshoe sewer office at 7pm.

Story By

Heather Niday

Heather is our Program Director and Traffic Manager. She started with Allegheny Mountain Radio as a volunteer deejay. She then joined the AMR staff in February of 2007. Heather grew up in the Richmond, Virginia, area and now lives in Arbovale, West Virginia with her husband Chuck. Heather is a wonderful flute player, and choir director for Arbovale UMC. You can hear Heather along with Chuck on Tuesday nights from 6 to 8pm as they host two hours of jazz on Something Different.

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