Lezorek tosses hat into Slaty Fork fight

By Drew Tanner, Staff Writer

John Leyzorek has joined a handful of Slaty Fork area residents and property owners in asking that Pocahontas County Circuit Court puts the brakes on the regional sewage treatment plant proposed for the resort area.

Leyzorek opposed the expansion of the Durbin Public Service District in 1998 and was an intervenor when the case went before the West Virginia Public Service Commission. At that time, Leyzorek argued that the expansion was part of a plan to subsidize development in the Snowshoe area and was against the law.

He later intervened in the 2005 PSC case that gave the PSD approval to move foward with the Slaty Fork project.

In his petition for injunction, filed August 31, Leyzorek said the project amounts to an "unwarranted public bail-out of a wealthy corporation." He goes on to say that the project's high rates and the expected increase in property values and property taxes will result in "forced gentrification and ethnic cleansing of the proposed service area."

The petition also mentions the numerous environmental concerns that have become familiar to those following the project, including the plant's potential impact on the trout population of the Elk River and local groundwater.

Leyzorek's petition was set for hearing on September 13, but as of Tuesday morning it had been removed from the court's docket, according to the Pocahontas County Circuit Clerk's office, though no final orders had yet been filed.

The petition brought by Slaty Fork residents and property owners Tom Shipley, Barbara Sharp Smith, Gil and Mary Willis, Ronald Pickering, Walter Workman and Lowell Gibson is scheduled for a hearing before Circuit Judge Joseph C. Pomponio Friday, September 7.