KEYSER — Financing plans are moving forward for Phase One of the Keyser water system improvement project, but construction is not expected to begin until next year.
Officials also indicated that city involvement in bringing public water to the Hollywood Road Addition — which is outside city limits — is not unprecedented.
Terry Lively, director of the Region 8 Planning and Development Council — which is working with the city to coordinate financing and design of the work — said all the tumblers are lining up for state and federal funding of the $4.2 million project. However, administrative details likely will not be resolved until the end of the year.
“I don’t think you’ll see dirt turned by the end of the year,” he said.
The phase one work involves replacement and relocation of the water tank at Potomac State College, replacement of the century-old water main along Limestone Road, and extension of water lines to  three dozen  homes on Hollywood Road that have poor wells.
A second phase of the project, at about $7 million, would replace the city’s 80-year-old water treatment plant on Water Street.
Among the financing issues still to be resolved is how project costs will be divided between the city of Keyser and the two major customers of the Keyser water system: The New Creek Water Association and the community of McCoole, Md.
At a meeting in October, representatives of the two water systems met with Keyser officials, Lively and the project engineers to hammer out cost-sharing. While the state and federal governments are providing the bulk funding through loans for the project, water system customers are expected to share in the expense as well through adjusted water rates.
At that October meeting an accounting firm advising the city estimated that city water rates will likely be increased as much as 50 percent to fund the work. City officials have since said that figure was inflated, but they have resigned themselves to a major rate increase, as water rates have not been raised in Keyser in many years.
New Creek representatives, though, balked at paying for the Hollywood Road and Limestone aspects of the project, saying those aspects of the project are not central to the larger water system — like the PSC water tank — and they should not have to share in funding.
At that point, the accounting firm agreed to revisit the funding formulas, and provide revised projections for a variety of cost-sharing schemes.
Lively said he does not expect New Creek to raise major objections to the cost sharing. “I don’t think they have a big beef (with the Hollywood Road project),” he said. “They just wanted to see a better breakdown on how the money is being spent.”
Lively said those new cost projections are nearly complete, but a followup meeting has not yet been set.
The Hollywood Road project has drawn the ire of some Keyser residents, however.
Addressing the City Council in December, Mineral County Magistrate David Harman, a Keyser resident, said those homes lie outside the city limits and should not be Keyser's responsibility. Mineral County government, he said, should fund any such extension of water service. As it is, the extension of new lines will be paid for by Keyser residents, while other pressing needs in the city's aging water system go unmet.
“You’re the mayor of Keyser, not Hollywood Road,” Harman told Mayor William “Sonny” Rhodes, who has long championed the Hollywood extension.
Addressing such concerns, Lively said Mineral County government has been involved with the project from the beginning, even if the county is not a funding partner in the work. Lively said Keyser was the natural choice for extending the lines, because the city's Limestone water main runs next to the Hollywood area. Noting that the Hollywood residents will become paying customers of the Keyser system, Lively said other projects in West Virginia have seen one county extend service to isolated homes just across the county line as an extension of an in-county project, because it made sense and it's the “the reasonable thing to be done.”
“To me it’s not unusual,” he said.