HURRICANE, W.Va. — Hundreds of community members from across Putnam County made their way to the Valley Park Community Center in Hurricane Tuesday night to show their support of a popular hiking/biking trail.
The Meeks Mountain Trails in Putnam County were hand built by community members for walking, running, and mountain biking. The trails have been open since 2019 and have become a popular destination in the county and the town of Hurricane.
American Electric Power Company recently proposed construction of 20 miles worth of transmission lines that would go right through the trails. On Tuesday, AEP held a public hearing to take comments and questions from community members regarding the proposal.
Sarah Doerner, a Putnam County community member that helped build the trails, says the news made her sick.
“Honestly I was sick,” Doerner said Tuesday night. “It’s really devastating. We’ve been impacted in a positive way with this trail system and the folks that we have met. We have a completely new group of friends that we didn’t even know lived around here.”
Robert Stonestreet, the Vice President of the Meeks Mountain Trail Alliance, says the trails have been embraced by people in the county and across the state.
“It’s been an amazing project,” Stonestreet said. “We’ve had so many people come in from out of town, but the people of Hurricane and Putnam County really have embraced it. We get 200-300 people a day out on these trails.”
George Porter, director of communications at AEP, says there has been a lot of feedback from community members over the last week, and he’s happy there was a good turnout.
“The last week, we’ve gotten a lot of information through social media, emails, phone calls from the people of the community letting us know how important these trails are to them, how important the neighborhood is to them,” Porter said. “We expected a good turnout and we’re happy that we got one.”
Porter says the conversations that AEP has had with community members is centered around what can be done better.
“All the conversations are, ‘what can we do better and what do you like and what don’t you like,” Porter said. “We’ve worked to put together what we think are pretty good preliminary study segments, so this is an opportunity to get with customers, find out information about their properties, find out information about the trails, find out information about their businesses. We’ve gotten all the vital information that we think will help us build the best project.”
AEP has said they will work with and listen to alternative ideas, as multiple signs displayed in the Valley Park Community Center Tuesday night read, “No final route has been determined. We value your input.”
Stonestreet says that he had productive conversations with AEP representatives during the open house-style hearing.
“All the AEP people have been very professional, very polite,” Stonestreet said. “There’s lots of signs that say that this is a proposed route, it’s not final. They’ve answered a lot of questions and we’re taking them at their word that they’re open to options and hope that we can find a solution to avoid a serious impact on the trail system.”
James Wilt, a Putnam County community member and active user of the trails, says the AEP representatives had a high volume of questions given the large crowd.
“I would say they seem overwhelmed with the volume of questions that they have,” Wilt said. “They are answering what they can but again, there’s not been a definitive, ‘we can do another way.”
Porter says he and his crew know that there’s a lot of passion behind each community member giving comments, and that’s understandable.
“You have to put yourself in their shoes,” Porter said. “You have to understand that they have all these volunteer hours on the trail. A lot of people grew up in this area, so you have to understand that this is important to them. We take that into consideration because we’re all property owners as well and it would be important to us. We take that into consideration when we start this process and when we get here, if anyone’s a little passionate, we understand.”
Doerner says all the volunteer hours that her and her peers put in come to mind when she rides the trails.
“As I use those trails, whether it’s biking or hiking or running, I often think of the people that helped build that section when we were out there,” Doerner. “That’s my favorite part, really just using the trails now that they’re out there and thinking about all of the people that put in the time and effort to build them.”
Porter says after the next step after the community hearings is to sort through the written feedback and go back to the drawing board to have the best line route to propose.
“We’re going to take every comment that we get from our property owners and community and we’re going to take a look at it,” Porter said. “We’re going to sit down as a team and evaluate those and then try to come up and determine the best line route.”
Porter says the timeline for getting the best line proposed may have been pushed back a bit after the barrage of comments Tuesday night.
“We had originally thought we’d have it determined by October, but it seems like we have a lot of comments we need to go through, so we may have to push that back a little bit,” Porter said. “We’re expecting to come up with one proposed route maybe in a couple months.”
AEP will hold another public hearing for Putnam County members from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Winfield Community Center.