City: Glenwood Road Slip Is Top Target for Federal Funding
Photo by Eric Ayres Trending
WHEELING -- Officials in the city of Wheeling are hopeful that federal funding will be awarded to help address the largest of three road slips currently impacting Glenwood Road.
The hillside roadway, which begins at its intersection with National Road in Fulton, has been plagued with slips for many years. The road is situated along a very steep hill and is the primary access to several secondary roads and neighborhoods up the hill.
During Tuesday night's meeting of Wheeling City Council, Councilman Tony Assaro requested that City Manager Robert Herron provide an update on the problem the city has been attempting to address from several different angles and with several funding sources.
"There's some good news on the Glenwood Road situation," Herron reported. "We currently have three slips on Glenwood Road that we're attempting to address. One is a very large slip that is on what's considered the lower part of Glenwood Road. It's a $4 million slip."
City officials have mentioned the nagging problem on a number of occasions in recent years during discussions with federal legislators.
"The city has submitted a Congressionally Directed Spending request for $3.2 million," Herron said, noting that the city has an $800,000 local match from its Project Fund to contribute to the $4 million project.
Herron said the proposal to fix the large slip on Glenwood Road is currently in the pipeline for the next round of Congressionally Directed Spending allocations. The project reportedly has passed initial hurdles and has been recommended to the full Senate Appropriations Committee by West Virginia Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice.
"So we’re keeping our fingers crossed that that Congressionally Directed Spending will go through," Herron said. "We made it clear, the mayor and I in discussions with both senators, that this is our no. 1 priority - to get that funded and to deal with that very large slip on Glenwood Road. The road is still passable, but obviously we want to get that fixed as soon as we possibly can. So that is a high priority."
Another slip a little farther up the road to the north has seen a temporary, less expensive fix by the city in recent years, but it has begun to erode, Herron said.
"A company has come in to look at putting a retaining wall or piling wall utilizing what has been done but to try to shore that up so we don’t have continued deterioration with that slip," he explained. "That’s a much smaller situation. We hope to have that cost sometime next week. We had some geotechnical work that has been done."
Final figures on the estimated cost of that work are being compiled and are expected to be presented to City Council in the coming weeks.
Farther up Glenwood Road, north of Forney Drive, is another slip that occurred during the heavy rains of April 2024 that caused significant flooding and mudslides in areas of the city. The event was declared a natural disaster and is eligible for funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, officials noted.
"That project has been funded by FEMA," Herron said of the slip near Forney Drive. "I’m happy to report that engineering is almost done on that. It will be out to bid within the next couple of weeks. We do have a bid opening scheduled on that slip for Oct. 30. That’s about a $600,000 project."
While Glenwood Road can still handle traffic, officials hope to bring lasting repairs to the roadway for the many residents who use it to access their homes.
"We’re making some progress," Herron said. "The big one obviously is the Congressionally Directed Spending request for the $4 million slip, which is a fairly lengthy one. We’re hopeful that that will be funded - we have the local match. And we’ll be doing the Forney road slip here within the next several months.
"Hopefully that’s good news for folks on Glenwood Road."