Published: October 01, 2008 09:05 pm      

Ashland residents take next step for innovative sewage treatment

ASHLAND — Representa-tives of the Ashland Community Utilities organization held a bid-opening conference at 1:30 p.m., in the Ashland Company Store on Wednesday, but the single bid the organization received is so significant, that the process of awarding the contract stretched beyond the end of business on that day and may continue a while longer.

Ashland Community Utilities advertised for a contractor to build a non-traditional sewage system in the community that will serve 27 homes and two businesses in a region that is blessed with incredible natural beauty, but short of traditional public infrastructure.

Ashland is a coal company town that dates from around the turn of the 20th Century. Like many McDowell County company towns, Ashland had rather sophisticated recreational facilities for residents, but a minimal number of public utilities.

“We’re just like a lot of McDowell County communities,” Jackie Persiani said. “Almost the whole county is hooked up to straight pipe sewage.”

Persiani serves as president of Ashland Community Utilities. “We’ve been working on developing a sewage treatment system that can serve this community for about two years now,” Persiani said. “We have 100 percent participation from the community it will serve. That represents about 71 residents, the people associated with the company store and the Hatfield and McCoy trail head.”

Sharon Walden, director of Travel Beautiful Appalachia Inc., said that Ashland’s surrounding terrain makes it challenging to engineer a traditional sewage treatment facility. “The surrounding mountains are too steep and the valleys are just too narrow for traditional treatment facilities to be effective,” Walden said prior to start of the bid-opening conference. “The community has already been working on the drain field, but the bid conference signals the start of the work on the facility.”

Walden and Persiani both said that the community has pursued grants from almost every imaginable foundation, including an Hawaiian foundation that provided $10,000 for the project. “We have raised more than $500,000,” Persiani said. “Hopefully, that will be enough.”

Persiani said that Walden, the project engineer and an engineer from Canaan Valley reviewed the proposal through Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t think we will have a decision today,” he said.

“This is a one-of-a-kind system,” Persiani said. “The water will go right into the ground — not into any tributaries that go into Elkhorn Creek. Hopefully, all of the questions posed by the engineers will get answered, and we can get started on the system.”

Persiani said that federal, state and county environmental protection agencies have been involved in the project “since day one,” and the non-profit Canaan Valley group has been working with Ashland since the project was conceived.

— Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com