Harrison County Officials Upset With the Way Shale Activity is Affecting Roadways
Is all of the truck traffic ruining Harrison County roadways? |
"Don't get me wrong, I still feel the gas boom is a positive for the county and we have a good relationship with all of the companies doing business in Harrison County," said Norris. "However, it is a relationship that should be based on mutual respect and I feel the county has been taken advantage of in several instances."
Norris passed around a stack of photos from a weekend road tour of the county. Citing several county highways with sagging patches, culverts blocked by debris and rough travel, Norris said, "This is a safety concern for our citizens who travel these roads and we feel that it should be our primary focus to protect the taxpayers. I feel we should hold up all road-use maintenance agreements until the road work which has already been promised is done."
"We never claimed we would have 100 percent compliance," said Ryan Dean, senior coordinator of corporate development for Chesapeake Energy who responded to charges of vehicles using non-bonded routes to access sites and responsibility for contractors by their corporate employers. "It's a blurry line. It is a little bit of science and a little bit of art."Read the entire article here.
What are your impressions of how shale activity affects area roads? Some of this article makes it sound like a free-for-all, where the companies are abusing the lack of enforcement power and using whatever roads they feel like using, regardless of what sort of mess it will leave behind. Is it a big concern for you? Feel free to sound off in the comments.
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