RALEIGH COUNTY, WV (WOAY) – In September, Senators Rollan Roberts and Brian Helton convened a Pax/Paint Creek Watershed meeting to address flooding in the area.
They recently returned to the Southern Conservation District Office with government stakeholders and various agencies to advance the project.
They say debris in Paint Creek needs to be removed. But one needs to be permitted to go into the creek.
“We have Alpha Natural Resources helping us as soon as they get permission to do so, a variety of things, including pulling trees out of the creek,” said Roberts (R-WV), who represents the ninth district. “We have to deal with some landowners who have problems there. But we would have to go across their land, get their permission, and this isn’t the season to do that.”
According to the senator, they identified seven blockages.
“That can’t be good because it’s going to redirect the water in other ways. They can take care of several of those in pretty short order as soon as they get that permission, which could happen any day now,” Roberts said.
A woman in the Paint Creek meeting was happy that after five years of effort, they reached this point.
“But she said for 20 years before that, there were mayors of Pax that tried to get attention drawn to it and were unsuccessful,” said the senator. “We just have a lot of problems in southern West Virginia that have been ignored for a long time, and it’s a challenge to work through the red tape.”
They are on it, Roberts says. It’s just taking a little longer than they wanted.
“We’re going to try to get things done as fast as we can because we want people to be safe,” the senator said.
