POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — A state of emergency declaration from Governor Patrick Morrisey helps accelerate efforts to fix a serious flooding issue in Mason County.
“We’ve got a major slip right along the Ohio River where Crooked Creek goes into the Ohio River,” said Mason County Emergency Management Director Jeremy Bryant.
The creek is a manmade waterway which was created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s as part of the town’s flood wall construction. Bryant said the stream carries storm water out of Point Pleasant and into the Ohio River, making it a critical waterway for flood prevention. Now, with the two sides of it collapsed where it enters the river, there are real concerns. During last week’s high water event the city received seven inches of rain on Thursday, and that was followed by even more rain on Saturday. It was more rain than the stream banks could handle. Now it is compromised and could be a disaster waiting to happen if a similar deluge were to occur.
“It was at the very, very tip top, so if we were to get another storm like that it would be a real concern. Right now, the waterway is open and it’s going to need some dredging and that kind of thing,” said Bryant.
But whatever is decided is needed to fix the problem, won’t come quickly and it won’t come cheap. The slip has impacted a CSX railroad track near the riverbank. The track is now closed. There have been ongoing talks this week between the Corps of Engineers, CSX, and the city, county, and state officials about the best way to make the repairs. The state of emergency removes a lot of the red tape typically associated with such work.
“It’s not a small deal at all. It’s one of those things that will take architectural engineering and that kind of thing before anything is done, because obviously we don’t want to make it worse,” said Bryant.
Bryant said there has been a lot of conversations to plan out what needs to be done and who will handle the work. The emergency declaration removes a lot of obstacles and red tape for state agencies to move more rapidly. Bryant was pleased to get the declaration because time isn’t on their side.
“There’s a lot of concerns there. It’s an infrastructure concern, it’s a railroad concern, we’ve got to keep that open because that’s where a lot of the water runs from the city if we have any more major rain,” Bryant said.