March 27, 2006
 
NEWS ANALYSIS/COMMENTARY: Pocahontas County Landowners to County: Don’t Abuse Eminent Domain; Take Up State’s Offer
 
By HNN Staff
 
Snowshoe, WV (HNN) – Pocahontas County residents are fighting a proposed sewage treatment facility that would require seizing one family's land via eminent domain, according to a report on West Virginia Public Radio's "Inside Appalachia."
 
The facility would primarily serve the Snowshoe Mountain resort, which needs a larger sewage treatment facility in order to grow. According to WVPR reporter Emily Corio, about 1,800 of the 2,000 customers of the plant would be at Snowshoe.
 
The facility would be located at the tiny community of Slatyfork, near Snowshoe, on nine acres of land which currently belongs to the Sharp family. They own a bed-and-breakfast adjacent to the proposed site along Highway 219 and claim their business will suffer if the plant is built.
 
Tom Shipley, who runs the bed-and-breakfast, says 60 percent of the land in Pocahontas County is owned by the state and federal governments, yet the county wants to seize private land for the project.
 
The county offered the Sharps about $100,000, but the family won't sell. County officials will have to use eminent domain to obtain the property. This is only one of many
 
When Pocahontas County State Senator Walt Helmich heard about the controversy, he asked the governor to make nearby state land available. Gov. Joe Manchin agreed, and a plot of land near the current site could be transferred to the developer for at $1 fee to the county commission.
 
The county says the alternate site would increase the overall price tag of the project by $3 million dollars from its current $17 million.
 
While the Sharps and Shipley understand that $3 million dollars is a lot of money – about 18 percent of the project's current budget – they think the county should use the state's land instead of seizing private land.
 
The land itself may not be worth the $3 million, but eminent domain should only be used in cases when no alternative is available and when the project is essential to a community's survival.
 
In this case, other land is available and the plant is to foster growth, not sustain an existing community. The sewer project is a worthy one, but it is absolutely not appropriate to obtain private property by the extreme measure of eminent domain in order to save money to essentially benefit another private property owner or owners.