Infrastructure: WVU, Marshall effort could be a great help
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Whether your favorite teams' chants begin with "We are ..." or "Let's go!" Mountain State residents can agree it's a wonderful thing to have West Virginia University and Marshall University team up with state government to tackle the problem of aging water system infrastructure.
When Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced the effort last week, he said the two institutions of higher learning will work with 11 planning and regional development councils to provide not only technical assistance but much-needed grant writing help.
Enough state and federal funding is crucial to get this done, and communities that are already desperately trying to modernize and improve water infrastructure are probably not swimming in extra cash to hire a team of grant writers.
"Marshall, WVU, and our 11 Regional Planning and Development Councils are going to bring their expertise to bear for communities that need it most," Morrisey said. "They will help small water systems compete for funding, navigate complicated requirements, and get projects moving. At the same time, we're going to cut through red tape when projects get stuck and make sure West Virginians can see the results."
That last bit is important.
King Bureaucracy loves to serve itself rather than West Virginians. If Morrisey and the West Virginia Grant Resource Centers can stand between communities and the bureaucrats' mission to drown them in red tape, it will be an incredible boost.
"Our role is to support the experts already doing this important work in their communities. By expanding the state's collective project development capacity and pooling Marshall's experts, we can help turn local priorities into competitive projects and bring more investment to West Virginia," said Sara Payne Scarbro, associate vice president for government relations at Marshall University and principal investigator for the West Virginia Grant Resource Centers.
Good, given how competitive WVU and Marshall tend to be in the athletic realm, if they and good actors in state government can continue working together, they will be unstoppable.