KIMBERLY, W.Va. — West Virginia American Water now officially stepping in to help out the Armstrong Public Service District in Fayette County until further notice after the water system was deemed inadequate.
Armstrong PSD entered into an interim Emergency Operations and Management Agreement with American Water Monday, which follows the Public Service Commission of West Virginia’s instructions for them to do so within a 10-day period.
“This is not a take over of Armstrong PSD, it’s really just an interim agreement with the PSD to allow us to step in and provide assistance to them as they work to get back to a more sustainable operation and maintenance for their customers,” WV American Water Senior Manager of External Affairs Megan Hannah told MetroNews.
The agreement allows American Water to assist the Armstrong PSD with a variety of maintenance operations, including a water treatment plan, leak survey and repair, and anything to do with water main replacement and repair.
It will also commit the district to provide the company with access to all of its facilities, data and information.
Hannah said they will be getting to work on the reviews and maintenance operations as soon as the PSC reviews and approves the interim agreement they filed Monday.
“West Virginia American Water will be stepping in to review the facilities, review their current plans and procedures, take a look at their system, begin that leak survey and leak repair, doing water main repair, assisting with their water treatment plan operations,” Hannah said. “So, there’s a lot of assistance that we’ll be able to step in and provide.”
Read More on Agreement here
However, once their assistance is completed, Hannah said the PSC will then determine the fate of Armstrong PSD going forward. She expects they will instruct American Water to conduct a forced acquisition of the system in the long term that would give them complete control of it.
This comes after many residents out of the 879 customers the district serves have filed a series of ongoing complaints about the system for various reasons, from water leaks to poor drinking and usability quality.
“We know the district has been struggling with water quality, with service reliability, outages have been a major problem for the system, and so the Public Service Commission has stepped in to review the system as a possible failing and in distress system,” Hannah said.
One PSC engineer who spoke at a public hearing last week before the district entered into the agreement said the system had not received any upgrades since it came into existence in 1955, and that it was quote, “the worst system currently operating in the state.”
The agreement entered between American Water and Armstrong PSD is designed to improve water service to all of the district’s customers, including those in Montgomery Heights.
Hannah said the next step depends on how the agreement goes and whether or not the Public Service Commission deems the Armstrong PSD to be qualified to again operate the facility on its own.
“We don’t have any set timeline on what the interim Emergency Operations Agreement would look like, but we do know the PSC will remain heavily involved in how that agreement is going, how that process is working for us,” she said.
The District’s Board is scheduled to meet in a special session on Wednesday to consider and approve the agreement.