— KEYSER, W.Va. — The Keyser City Council approved a 30 percent increase in city water rates Wednesday, setting the stage for both a water system expansion project and a possible appeal to the West Virginia Public Service Commission.

City officials say the 30 percent increase, which will affect all city water customers, is needed to pay for the first phase of a water system expansion and improvement project. Phase I, valued at more than $4 million, includes replacing and relocating the 1-million-gallon water tank used to supply the system, replacing a century-old water line along Limestone Road, and extending water service in the Hollywood Road area.

The project’s future looked grim in the council’s July 14 meeting, when council support for the rate increase appeared to be waning and Councilman Glen Shumaker made a motion to table it.

In that meeting, newly elected Councilman Bill Roy said he was “not in favor of a 30 percent increase to the residents of Keyser.”

But Roy voted in favor of the increase Wednesday, saying later that he felt it was necessary to move the project forward.

“I feel that we don’t need that high of a rate increase, but we do need the improvement and the new improvements on the water system,” Roy said. “I’m not in favor of the city of Keyser putting in the Limestone section ... but it’s just one of those things that you have to do.”

Mayor William “Sonny” Rhodes attributed the council’s change of heart to gaining more knowledge on the project.

“After some more information, really the same information we’d had before, everybody got onboard,” Rhodes said. “I’m just delighted that everybody’s on board with it.”

Keyser resident David Harman, who has opposed Keyser customers footing the bill for the Hollywood Road extension, said he was disappointed with the votes of the new council members.

“They just voted yes without any explanation,” Harman said. “At the last council meeting Mr. Roy had said he was definitely against the 30 percent increase, but yesterday he said nothing, he just voted.”

Hollywood Road resident Nellie McCloud said the system extension can’t come soon enough for her and other neighbors, who have been struggling with bad water and dry wells for years.

McCloud said she’s lived in the area since 1968 and has had water problems the entire time.

“We have to pack our water, most of us that live here,” McCloud, 71, said. “I’m going to have to wash clothes Saturday, and I’m going to have to drag the water here, and drag it in the house, and drag it to the machine.”

She circulated a petition 14 years ago to get city water to Hollywood Road, and presented that petition again at Wednesday’s council meeting.

“You don’t think of something happening like this in this day and age,” McCloud said. “It’s hard when you have to live like this. And I ain’t the only one.”

Rhodes said he expects a protest to the PSC from the New Creek Water Association, a customer of the Keyser water system.

In a public hearing on the issue, the association submitted a prepared statement opposing “the rate hike in its current structure.”

It argued that an across-the-board increase of 30 percent was discriminatory to the city’s resale customers, New Creek and the McCoole area of Allegany County, because resale customer rates should be “analyzed separately from the overall operational cost of the providing utility.”

New Creek previously threatened to appeal to the PSC if the rate increase was adopted by the city. If that happens, Rhodes said, a PSC review would likely delay the project for about 3 months.

Previously, the lowest water rate available to a customer in Keyser was $2.83 per 1,000 gallons, and the city charged resale customers $2.23 per 1,000 gallons.

With the 30 percent hike, the lowest rate available to a Keyser customer will be $3.68 per 1,000 gallons, and the resale rate $2.89.

Allegany County and New Creek set the rates at which their residents purchase the resale water from them.

Contact Megan Miller at mmiller@times-news.com.