County to waste more taxpayer money on Water Shortage Farce

The on going waste of taxpayer’s money on the fake water shortage continues. As our economic continues to slide deeper into the recession many people are cutting back and saving their money for the future, but for some reason government doesn’t want to do the same thing. This puts an ever increasing burden on the taxpayers when they can least afford it.

The Wednesday addition of the News Tribune reports a WVU student was paid $5,000 as a precursor to a much larger study. The PHC reported last year that “DHHR notified the county they are making available $92,000 to assist with the study.” This $92,000 of taxpayer money is just an assist as the full study is expected to cost somewhere around a quarter million dollars.

This is what the study will tell us: We will find that Piedmont gets its water from Savage River in Maryland, the Elk Garden area gets its water from Grant County, and Ridgeley and Wiley Ford are connected to Cumberland’s water supply for now. This means that many of the people of Mineral County don’t even rely on water from within the county. History will also show that even in the worst drought, the Keyser and New Creek water systems have never ran out of water. Also keep in mind that the Limestone Dam is a water reservoir for the city of Keyser that is no longer used and they can’t seem to empty it, because to much water flows into it. The Mountaintop Water Department commissioned a study which claims that their reservoir contains over 100 million gallons of water and does not drop much even in dry spells.

The study will also find that Jennings Randolph Lake has 41,000 acre feet of water in storage that is enough to supply every man, woman and child with 100 gallons a day for over 13 years if the river stopped flowing today. There is an additional 51,000 acre feet used for water quality management, so we are looking at over 27 years worth of water if it didn’t rain for the next 27 years and nobody in Mineral County uses any of that water now!

The county government is acting very strange and very anti-business on many issues. Consider that the County Commission is not actively supporting the $138 million dollar investment in the county on the Wind Project which will generate an additional $326,591 in taxes for the school system alone as reported by the News Tribune on Wednesday. I cannot understand why the county commission would not actively support the increase in funding to the school system. County Commissioner Spiggle’s wife Betty sent a letter to the Public Service Commission actively opposing the project and can be viewed on the Public Service Commissions website. Commissioner Wayne Spiggle pushed the County Commission to request making US 50 a Scenic Byway which would hinder business. Now it is the water study, which if not done correctly, can be used as a way to restrict business growth and economic growth.

It is time for the County Commission to stop wasting the taxpayer’s money on anti-business policies and water studies. If you want to spend our tax dollars on water, then we believe you should spend it on providing additional water and water safety. Connect the different water systems in the county together, so that in an emergency the separate water systems can help each other. If a chemical truck were to wreck and spill its contents into New Creek, then a connected system would allow Keyser to bring in water from Elk Garden or Piedmont. If water quality becomes and issue in Fort Ashby, then water could be supplied from Fountain or elsewhere in a connected system.