WHEELING — Officials in the city of Wheeling are looking ahead to the next phase of major capital improvement projects for the city’s sprawling municipal water system.

This month, staff members of the Wheeling Water Department and representatives of engineering firm CT Consultants met with the Development Committee of Wheeling City Council to provide an outline of prioritized projects for the city water system over the course of the next few years. In total, about $19.8 million worth of capital improvement projects are being targeted.

City Manager Robert Herron explained that the city’s Water Pollution Control Department also has a capital improvement plan — known as its long-term Water Pollution Control Plan — which has been ongoing with multiple phases of work throughout town. The WPCD long-term control plan has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of projects targeted in phases over the next 20 years.

“On the water side, we have a very robust capital improvement plan, as well,” Herron said. “The last water system improvement project was in 2020 — that was the Main and Market street waterline improvement project.”

Herron said the WPCD in December will present to city officials the projects for the fourth phase of its long-term place. Herron indicated that departments will be outlining not only the projects, but soon will be detailing potential impact these projects will have on customer rates.

“We’re one of the largest water departments in the state of West Virginia,” Herron noted. “There are a lot of moving parts. We service the county. We service a community in Pennsylvania. As is the case with any utility, things wear out, things need to be updated, things need to be replaced and repaired.”

Staff from the Water Department, including Water Superintendent Lori Siburt, as well as engineers from CT Consultants discussed what is being eyed for the next phase of projects on the water side of Wheeling’s utility improvements.

“These are the immediate needs for the next five or six years for the water department,” Herron noted.

“We do have a lot of projects,” Siburt said. “We have a lot of things going on in the water department and a lot of issues we’ve been working on. We have a 10-year plan and a five-year plan.

Engineer Dan Barr of CT Consultants outlined four main capital improvement projects that have been prioritized for the water department. They included a Mozart/Clearview Booster Replacement, Boggs Hill Booster Station, Water Treatment Plant Dewatering Improvements and Atlas, Carmel, Grandview Reservoir, Oglebay-Leewood Waterline Replacement.

The existing booster station in Mozart was built in 1970. It is in an unsafe, confined space situated in a flood plain, Barr noted. The Clearview Booster Station was built in 1957. It is structurally unsound and is starting to shift. The replacement of those two stations is expected to cost around $3.2 million total.

Officials noted that the Boggs Hill Booster Station project which services the Oglebay area is currently the most critical project on the books.

“The Oglebay situation is a glaring weakness within the system,” Herron said.

This project proposes a new booster station and water main for the Boggs Run area to provide redundancy – or another water source, adding to the existing one – to the Oglebay Pressure Zone. This improvement will reduce run times of the Oglebay pumps.

Officials said the summer irrigation demands for watering the greens on the golf courses at Oglebay and the Wheeling Country Club during the drought, in addition to usage by a significant number of other customers in this area, pushes capacity of the system.

“I don’t want to say we’re going to run out of water,” Barr noted. “I’m not trying to say that, but we’re nervous about that happening.”

Siburt agreed that the Boggs Hill Booster Station Project – a $7.3 million project – would be No. 1 on the Water Department’s list of priorities.

“For the Oglebay system – we have a huge amount of people serviced by that area,” she said. “That’s why we need some fortification in that system.”

Officials said the Boggs Run area would be an ideal location to build a new booster and run a new water main to Oglebay.

At the Wheeling Water Treatment Plant, officials are looking to install a new dewatering system. This $3.1 million project would replace existing dewatering equipment installed in 1977 that is reportedly nearing the end of its useful life and is difficult to maintain. Dewatering is the process of removing excess water from the sediment that is separated from the raw river water intake. Water is removed from the sediment, which is sent to the landfill.

Improved dewatering of the sediment will greatly reduce the amount of sediment that is landfilled, thus reducing disposal costs.

The Atlas, Carmel, Grandview Reservoir, Oglebay-Leewood Waterline Replacement project is named after the primary roads along the service routes where the improvements are eyed, officials explained. This $6.2 million project will not only have substantial water main replacements, but also replacement of other lines in neighborhoods in these areas.

“We summed up all of the water main breaks in these areas – this is the driving issue here,” Barr explained, noting that no booster stations or buildings need to be built as part of this project. “There’s been about 126 water main breaks in the last 20 years or so – many of them more recently than that.”

There have been a lot of repairs and a lot of disruption of service to customers, Barr noted. This project is designed to address this issue with installation of multiple water mains. Plans involve installation of more than 10,000 feet of 6-inch lines, almost 6,500 of 8-inch lines and 500 feet of 20-inch lines, with about 223 residential service replacements.

“This is a bigger project,” Barr said. “It’s a lot of water main – over three miles.”

Installations will be along those named roads and through certain neighborhoods, including recently paved alleys, officials said.

None of these projects has made it to the design phase yet, but rate analyses are being completed and should be proposed by next month for both water and WPCD projects.

“We’ve had an accountant look at the rates that would be necessary to pay for these projects,” Herron said, noting that officials are looking at debt service and Operational and Maintenance Increases that may likely be needed to fund the capital improvement projects for city utilities.