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Conservation agency tells committee it will continue dam inspections amid proposed authority transfers
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Summary
Former district supervisors and the executive director of the West Virginia Conservation Agency debated a bill provision to transfer flood-control dam authority; the agency said it conducts thousands of inspections and would continue inspections and federal partnerships while local supervisors warned of lost roles and jobs.
Former conservation district supervisors and the executive director of the West Virginia Conservation Agency testified to the Senate Committee on Government Organization about provisions that would transfer authority over flood-control dams to the state agency.
John Pitsenbarger, president of the West Virginia Association of Conservation Districts, told the committee the districts have historically sponsored and maintained many dams and that supervisors are locally elected. He said the proposed transfer would remove local sponsorship responsibilities and could cost jobs in parts of Southern West Virginia and Taggart's Valley. "We as the local sponsors would like to continue to be the local sponsors of these dams and structures... If not, we will lose some jobs in Southern West Virginia and Taggart's Valley area of the state," Pitsenbarger said.
Judith Lyons, executive director of the West Virginia Conservation Agency, testified that the agency performs the inspections and on-the-ground work. "Our agency has done the inspections continually... we conducted over 2,200 dam inspections last year," Lyons said. She said the agency maintains technical and engineering staff, coordinates with the Department of Environmental Protection, the Office of Emergency Services and NRCS for high-rain events and emergency activity, and serves as sponsor on many federal projects.
Lyons described active project funding and a larger program pipeline: she said roughly $30,000,000 was active for the Brush Creek 15 dam project in Mercer County, Brush Creek 14 follows, and that combined federal planning and construction activity she described totaled about $60,000,000; she also referenced a broader program figure of about $240,000,000 in state match or related funding needs. Lyons said she did not believe transferring authority would cause a loss of federal funding, citing prior coordination with NRCS staff who visited the state and supported funding decisions.
The exchange left a substantive factual record but did not resolve the operational question of whether and how local sponsorship roles would be preserved; Lyons said inspections and technical work would continue under the agency, while Pitsenbarger urged preserving local involvement.
The committee did not take an immediate formal vote on transfers of conservation-district authority at this meeting; the primary formal actions involved the committee substitute for SB 894 and related amendments.
