Athens County Commissioner held their weekly meeting Tuesday morning to discuss a groundwater sampling project, a promotion, the possible renewing of a road agreement and to decide whether to close a road down or not.
Jennifer Bowman, environmental project manager at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University, met with Athens County Commissioners on Tuesday morning to discuss any progress made toward a countywide groundwater-sampling project.
Bowman, who has been in attendance at the county commissioners’ meeting two weeks in a row, came with hopes to answer any lingering questions the commissioners still had.
“There are still a lot of questions that I think still need to be answered,” Bowman said. “One thing they want me to look at is the geology of the area.”
Bowman and the commissioners are also still looking for locations where they would like to make the extractions.
“We are still looking at where is the best locations,” said Lenny Eliason, county commissioner. “More things came up this meeting that we need to address.”
Both sides will continue to explore more ideas and try to work something out in the near future, Bowman said.
“Another big question is where we will get the funding from,” Bowman said. “Hopefully we will have some answers in a couple weeks.”
Bob Gallagher, director of Athens County Job and Family Services, was also present at the Tuesday morning meeting. Gallagher came to discuss the promotion of one of his employees.
“Bob wanted to promote someone to become a fiscal officer,” Eliason said.
The commissioners unanimously approved the promotion.
Jeff Maiden, Athens County engineer, also visited the commissioners Tuesday to go over the county’s Road Use Maintenance Agreement.
The agreement is between Athens County officials and Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company. The agreement states the Tennessee Gas Company can use the roads in Athens County to allow their pipeline to retrieve natural gas, Eliason said.
“We renewed the agreement with Tennessee Gas, allowing them to use the roads,” Eliason said. “If anything happens to our roads then the agreement says that they will take care of it and make the necessary fixes.”
Athens had a similar agreement with the gas company last year, Eliason added.
County commissioners also conducted a road viewing Tuesday afternoon in York Township.
“It is a very old road in the York Township that has a building right in the middle of it, so we wanted to look at it and decided whether to vacate it,” said Chris Chmiel, county commissioner.
After conducting the road viewing, the commissioners convened back at their offices and decided to close down the road, which was almost never used for vehicular traffic.
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