Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090054
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The Cedar Run Road resident has watched this summer as runoff from three heavy rains damaged the steep, 400-foot-long gravel driveway that serves his home and two others just outside Blacksburg.
Raines and his wife, Pat, have used the driveway for 17 years. They didn't have a problem until this summer. That's when work began on a much-heralded - and taxpayer-assisted to the tune of $400,000 - expansion plant for Wolverine Gasket Co., uphill in the Blacksburg Industrial Park.
"This is a problem since it wasn't our fault," Raines said. "What really irritates me is that we've got tax money in that project."
He's called officials with Montgomery County, the state, Wolverine, Robinson Construction Co. and C.R. Sult Inc., the excavating contractor. As a last resort, he called the newspaper.
All he wants is the runoff problem prevented and his driveway fixed. So far, Raines said, no one has had a satisfactory answer.
The landowner, Harvey, Sult, Robinson Inc., and the primary contractor, Robinson Construction Co., filed an erosion and sediment control plan before work began. That's where a builder describes where soil will be disturbed and how erosion will be prevented.
A local review panel, the Skyline Soil and Water Conservation District board, approved the plan in March. It also approved a slight modification last month.
Since approval, it has been the county's responsibility - through its two-man building inspection office - to make sure the contractor is living up to the plan.
Wayne Mannon, Montgomery's head building official, said Sult, the grading contractor, has the required practices in place, including a synthetic fabric filter fence to catch silt below the 6 acres of disturbed soil, a seeded bank on the steep hill above Raines' land and a barrier of brush at the top of the hill.
Yet Janet Y. Smith, a Dublin-based erosion control specialist with the state Division of Soil and Water Conservation, noted several corrective steps that needed to be taken following a July 26 inspection of the Wolverine site. The state is responsible for making sure the county enforces erosion control plans.
Smith inspected the site after complaints from Raines and other residents and found: Brush barriers needed to be cleaned out, more grass seed needed to be spread, other control measures shown on the erosion plan needed to be properly installed and maintained and diversion channels needed to be built to move runoff away from the north side of the Wolverine building.
"Any erosion damage or sedimentation of downstream properties or waterways that was caused by this activity should be repaired," Smith wrote in a letter to the county. "The county should proceed to require the appropriate owners to make necessary corrective actions as soon as possible."
The erosion plan, prepared by Anderson & Associates, calls for the digging of a swale, or grass channel, to direct runoff away from the hill above the homes of Raines and his neighbors and into a stormwater detention pond. But the diversion swale cannot be built until workers finish siding the Wolverine building, Mannon said. That siding work appears to be going on right now.
Wolverine official Al Guarino said the company is aware of Raines' complaint but at this point doesn't yet own the land and is not involved in the situation. "The contractor is definitely the one that you would have to discuss this with," he said.
Bob Leach with Robinson Construction and Paul Sult of C.R. Sult Inc. could not be reached for comment, despite attempts last week and Tuesday to contact them.
"We've told [Raines] we're trying to do everything we can to get them to put that swale in," Mannon said. "We're trying to work with [the contractors] to get it resolved as soon as possible."
It can't be soon enough for Raines. And once the runoff is prevented, there's still the issue of who should pay to repair the driveway, which now presents a slow, bone-and-suspension-system-rattling uphill drive.
Sult visited the driveway this summer and offered to install two 24-inch culverts to divert runoff below the driveway and down to Cedar Run Road, Raines said, but he wanted $4,000 for the job.
To Raines, that's too much. "I'd be willing to work with them and help put up a bit if they were willing to put the road back in condition," he said.
For now, Raines just wants someone in government to show some leadership and help him get his problem fixed. "I don't know who to talk to."
by CNB