|
West Virginia has a history of not being able to protect and preserve the best of what the state has to offer.
It is spring, and white water fed by
melting snow races through Cheat River Canyon and Big Sandy Creek Gorge.
Oak, beech and hemlock tower over the tumbling flows, and thickets of
rhododendrons line them like a crowd at a parade.
But there is fear in this almost heavenly part of the state. The
whitewater boaters, cavers, hikers, birders, campers, hunters and fishers
who love this region are worried that its pristine beauty will be spoiled
because a power conglomerate, Allegheny Energy, is seeking public bids for
5,400 acres it owns along the waterways.
They fear that the strapped electric company's decision last week to
end exclusive negotiations to sell the land to the state and instead put the
properties up for public bid could open the ecologically fragile,
steep-sloped canyon and gorge to timbering, mining and housing development.
"As landowners go, Allegheny Energy has been good. Its lands have
always been open for public use and I'm sorry to see them go," said Charlie
Walbridge, a kayaker and member of American Whitewater and Friends of the
Cheat, two of the organizations fighting to preserve the canyon and gorge.
"We just want to make sure that this stays the kind of place where
people want to come and visit, live and work. We think the best way to do
that would be for the state to buy it."
Allegheny Energy acquired the properties along the Cheat River and
Big Sandy Creek in Preston County, 100 miles south of Pittsburgh, in the
1920s for hydroelectric projects that were never built. It is selling them
now because it is heavily in debt and needs to raise cash.
The Maryland-based company, which sells electricity in Pennsylvania
as West Penn Power, suffered financial losses when it expanded into
wholesale energy trading shortly before the Enron Corp. collapse decimated
that industry. The company has been hurt during the past year by lawsuits,
credit downgrades and stock sell-offs.
To aid its recovery, Allegheny Energy has scaled back its energy
trading, canceled power plant construction projects, suspended stock
dividends and reduced its work force by 10 percent.
Last week, after negotiating with the state of West Virginia and its
agent, the nonprofit Conservation Fund, for almost a year, Allegheny Energy,
which has donated thousands of acres to West Virginia for state parks and
other public lands over the years, announced it was soliciting bids on the
properties.
"It's not that we reached an impasse, but we never got to the point
where an acceptable offer was made," said Allen Staggers, a spokesman for
the energy company. "A lot of parties have shown interest, and the state was
one. As things developed it became clear we didn't know the real value of
the properties, so we came to the conclusion to solicit bids."
Staggers would not say how much the company expects to get for the
properties or whether it has received inquiries from private developers or
mining and lumber companies. He said 30 bid packages were sent out.
Susan Small-Plante, a spokeswoman for West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise,
said the Conservation Fund had offered $700 an acre -- $3.78 million -- for
the properties and secured a $1 million, no-interest, three-year loan from
the Nature Conservancy.
The loan gives the state, which is facing a tight budget, time to
raise additional money for the purchase from fees or Land and Water
Conservation Program funds, Small-Plante said.
In past land sales, Allegheny Energy allowed the state to spread out
payments over time, but that isn't an option now because of the company's
financial troubles.
The decision to put the properties out for bid surprised and
disappointed Wise, who in a letter to Jay Pifer, Allegheny Energy president,
urged him to reconsider.
"The potential negative consequences of the sale of this property to
private interests are many," the governor wrote, "including avoidable and
unnecessary conflicts involving impacts on endangered species, the negative
impact on various economic development efforts in the surrounding
communities and the effect on traditional and future recreational access to
this vital resource."
The region is home to more than 50 caves and 10 threatened or
endangered species, including the Indiana bat and the flat-spired
three-toothed land snail.
The possible land sale has pushed local environmental groups into a
frenzy of action.
Letter writing and e-mail campaigns were initiated by the Cheat
Canyon Coalition, an umbrella organization for 13 conservation and outdoors
groups. Ten state legislators in West Virginia also have signed a letter
urging Allegheny Energy to sell the land to the state.
"Many people from the Pittsburgh area have enjoyed the caves down
there," said Heather Houlahan, a Pittsburgh Grotto chapter member of the
National Speleological Society from Cranberry. "It would be a terrible thing
to see an area like that, a major wild area intact as it is, lost to
development."
Houlahan said allowing limestone quarries to mine in the canyon or
gorge would disrupt the normal flow of water into tributary streams and
create major problems for the Cheat River.
Walbridge said studies done by the state showed that making the
canyon and gorge areas public lands would increase recreation expenditures
and economic benefits to the surrounding communities by $575,000 a year. The
amount of tax revenues lost by converting the Allegheny Energy land to
public ownership would be $6,200 a year.
He said Friends of the Cheat and other groups would help raise the
money necessary to buy the land, and Small-Plante said the governor's office
had received offers of donations for the land, including one for $50,000.
Staggers said it was still possible for the state to purchase the
land, but said the company could begin evaluating bids as early as May.
Small-Plante said the state had requested a bid package from the company and
remained in the hunt.
"This is a significant piece of property, not only because of the
endangered species. The tracts are tremendously important to the
recreational economy of the area and state," she said. "This is not just
another piece of land."
Another well-known nature attraction - Blackwater Falls Canyon is being timbered with roadways being dozed through the
tourist attraction, and continues to be at further risk.
| 
