FAYETTEVILLE — The Fayette County Commission heard a report from an Appalachian Power representative on storm recovery efforts at its early August meeting.

T.J. Meadows said it was “by far the largest event we’ve faced in the history of Appalachian Power Co.” and set a number of records for the company.

Moving 600 miles in just 10 hours, the derecho caused outages that peaked at 573,000 Appalachian Power customers in Virginia and West Virginia.

Meadows said West Virginia took the brunt of the storm, which knocked out 1,500 poles, 100 distribution stations, 400 circuit breakers and 100 transmission lines.

Challenges included extreme temperatures, housing of outside crews, the lack of warning and the vastness of the storm, which made obtaining outside help more difficult.

“We really feel that given the challenges we were up against, we did a really great job,” said Meadows.

The storm cost the company $94 million and is prompting a review by the state Public Service Commission, which Meadows says the company welcomes.

County Commission President Matt Wender said he didn’t want to come across as sounding critical of the recovery efforts, but asked Meadows about the company’s ongoing maintenance efforts to clear trees from power line rights-of-way.

“It used to be that we saw power company guys out there cutting trees down and doing maintenance. I think that’s the real issue in how prepared we are,” said Wender.

“In terms of tree trimming, we would love to do more, but it gets down to who is going to pay more in base rates. We would have to raise our rates,” said Meadows.

He says the company cut 200,000 trees and trimmed 300,000 more in West Virginia last year.

“If the $94 million had been applied over years (to clearing rights-of-way), would this have been as severe?” asked Wender.

“We think it would have been severe because most trees were outside the 10-foot right of way. We frankly feel that if we had been spending as much as we’d like on trimming, we would still have experienced a significant problem,” said Meadows.

He says the company anticipates recovering those costs by a regulatory mechanism that would spread it out over eight to 10 years to minimize rate impact.

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The commission denied a request that the county enter into an additional two-month lease of the former North American River Runners property.

In June, the commission voted to purchase the property to create the Fayette County Fire Academy to offer basic and advanced training in firefighting skills.

They denied the rent request because there is no provision in the current lease to apply the rent toward the ultimate purchase price of the property.

Before moving forward on any purchase, the commission is also waiting on an appraisal and a court opinion as to whether fire levy funds can be used toward certain aspects of the project.

In other commission proceedings, Miles Dean was reappointed to the Fayette County Planning Commission. After initially tabling the reappointment of Gary Harding, the commission eventually did so by a vote of 2 to 1, with Wender voting against.

Two polling places in the county will change for the November general election. Voters in precinct 72 will now report to the Danese Community Building instead of Danese Elementary, which closed. In precinct 74, the Corliss Community Center replaces the Babcock Community Building.

As thanks for Immaculate Conception Catholic Church’s effort in storm recovery, the commission voted to donate $1,000 to the youth services program that works with the church to refurbish the homes of underprivileged people.

The church served as a full shelter after the storm. The Church of Christ in Fayetteville and the Lewis Center in Oak Hill did as well, but they are reportedly pursuing reimbursement for their expenses through FEMA.

Finally, Tyler Bragg of the county assessor’s office, presented a final budget for a grant application to the West Virginia Broadband Mapping Program in the amount of $19,406.

If the grant is approved, Bragg says it will enable an online zoning and permitting submission tool; create a free, interactive web map showing the county’s zoning designations; and begin to populate the county’s website with more information.

— E-mail: cmoore@register-herald.com