Sinking to the Bottom of the River
Three barges to be retired in Westover
Morgantown Dominion Post
13 December 2010
By Evelyn Ryan
Vance River Terminal has expanded its plan to retire one of its three
barges and use it to stabilize the river bank at its Westover site.
An inspection of the two remaining barges showed that they were in bad
condition and will have to be retired as well, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers reported.
The inspection was part of the process for Vance River Terminal to
obtain a Corps of Engineers permit to do the work, the Corps said in an
updated public notice of the work.
Aaron Vaughn Johnson, president of Vance River Terminal, said the
company has upgraded its facility throughout the years to make it
stronger and more efficient, as well as cleaner, safer and more
aesthetically pleasing.
“Unfortunately, our barges, which we use in our mooring system, are
aged and we must replace them,” he said. “Our concept is to embed
inshore the ones we have, which will define our shoreline. Newer barges
will go in place of our existing barges.
“Once our existing barges have been moved to their new location and
stabilized,” he added, “we can bury our electric, vastly improving the
appearance of our coastline.”
The permitting process has not been finalized, he said, but no negative
reaction has been received.
“At the moment, there is no timeframe as to when this project may
occur,” he said.
In the permit application May 25, the Corps reported that plans were to
sink Spar No. 1 barge, securing it with chains. It would be reinforced
and filled with rock. A new barge would replace it as a floating
mooring cell.
The revised permit application calls for shelving Spar No. 2 and Spar
No. 3 barges in the same fashion and using them to stabilize the bank
at the river terminal.
Three new barges will replace the old ones as floating mooring cells.
“The process is a simple one and we will do the work ourselves,”
Johnson said. “The barges float [draft] in as little as one foot of
water. Once dredged one foot below the surface, they will simply float
in.”
The project won’t take long to complete, he said, and will not infringe
into the channel any more than the terminal does now.
Vance is the last independent dock remaining in the area, Johnson said.
“This year, we celebrated our 50th anniversary of being in the docking
business,” he said. “We are a third-generation, family-owned and
-operated river loading and offloading facility located in the
Industrial Zone of Westover.”
The terminal loaded coal for CONSOL Energy for many decades, offloaded
sand, salt and decorative stones, and most recently, for several years,
loaded coal for Alpha Natural Resources from the Kingwood Whitetail
Mine until it closed in December 2008, he said.
“We fought long and hard to have the Westover Industrial By-Pass
Roadway built,” he said, “allowing ingress and egress to and from the
Industrial Zone, so that trucks could bypass the residential
neighborhood.”
That by-pass, he said, has been renamed George Fanok Boulevard. It runs
from Monongahela Avenue to Dunkard Avenue, near Granville.