Mon Commission Rejects Cleanup Bids for former Quality Glass Site

None met specifications for the brownfields project


Morgantown Dominion Post
8 October 2009
By Tracy Eddy

Using the Brownfields grant money, the county paid the engineering firm $21,900 to come up with a cleanup plan and will also pay the engineering firm $14,800 to oversee the cleanup of the site, once the county hires a contractor to do the work.

The Monongalia County Commission rejected all the bids it received from contractors interested in cleaning up the former Quality Glass site on Van Voorhis Road.

County Grant Coordinator Joanna Krafczyk said the bid specifications would be advertised again "as soon as possible."

The County Commission received four bids for the project during its Wednesday meeting, but all were rejected because none met the specifications the county advertised.

Krafczyk said the county had asked any contractor that put in a bid for the contract to include a bond for 10 percent of the cost of the total bid in the advertised specifications, but two of the bids did not include bid bonds.

One of the bids was put out by a contractor who is not licensed to work in West Virginia, she said, so that bid had to be rejected as well.

Krafczyk said the other bid was more than the grant the county received to cover the cost of the cleanup and the county could not afford it.

The county is using money from a $200,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Cleanup grant to fund the project. She said the county is also contributing $40,000 to the clean up.

The former Quality Glass site is about three acres, Krafczyk said. There is only a certain portion of the three acres that needs to be cleaned up, she said, but she wasn't sure how big that portion is.

Asbestos needs to be removed from the area, she said, and some of the soil has been contaminated by arsenic and lead, which also must be removed.

The county hired CTL Engineering to come up with a plan for the best way to clean up the former glass factory site.

Using the Brownfields grant money, the county paid the engineering firm $21,900 to come up with a cleanup plan and will also pay the engineering firm $14,800 to oversee the cleanup of the site, once the county hires a contractor to do the work.

Krafczyk said the county doesn't know yet what it will do with the land once it is cleaned up.

Also at Wednesday's meeting, the County Commission scheduled the canvassing for last Saturday's special election on zoning.

The County Commission will start preparing for the canvassing at 9 a.m. Friday at the Monongalia County Courthouse, 243 High St. But commissioners won't go through the 119 provisional ballots that were cast during the special electron and determine whether or not those ballots can be counted until Tuesday, Commission President Asel Kennedy said.

The courthouse will be closed Monday, in observance of Columbus Day.

County Clerk Carye Blaney previously said that the provisional ballots wouldn't be enough to change the outcome of either zoning election, even if all the votes were in favor of the proposed zoning ordinances.

The majority of voters voted against the proposed zoning ordinances for Cheat Neck and Cheat Lake.