February 4, 2005

Town may annex span to control trucks

Jim Wallace
Daily Mail staff

Chesapeake is considering coping with about 400 heavy coal trucks that go through town each day by annexing a bridge just outside of town and having police enforce speed and other traffic laws on the bridge.

"It'd be a way to control the problem," Mayor Damron Bradshaw said.

The coal truck problem is expected to be the big issue at the town council meeting at 7 p.m. Monday.

"A lot of folks are coming in to complain," Bradshaw said.

Chesapeake got rid of many of the coal trucks that ran through town five years ago when it bought a set of scales to enforce weight limits on W.Va. 61, the main highway through town. But after W.Va. 61 became part of the state's new Coal Resource Transportation System last year, the state has allowed coal trucks weighing up to 120,000 pounds to use it.

Town officials would prefer to have the trucks use the West Virginia Turnpike instead, but because it's part of the interstate highway system, the federal government limits loads on the Turnpike to no more than 80,000 pounds.

Bradshaw said U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is seeking help from the federal Department of Transportation to get that rule changed, but it won't be easy. Perhaps by declaring coal a "defense commodity," the federal government might be willing to allow the heavier trucks on the Turnpike, he said.

"They're already running from Pax and Mossy to Paint Creek and Chelyan," Bradshaw said, but he doesn't know for sure how heavy those coal trucks on the Turnpike are.

So in lieu of a change in federal regulations, annexation of the bridge over Fields Creek, which is just outside the town limits, looks to some Chesapeake residents to be the best solution to cut down on the coal truck traffic.

"We would annex only the highway," Bradshaw said. "That way, no one could complain."

By that, he means that no private property would be involved and the change would be considered only a minor boundary adjustment that the town might get the county commissioners to approve.

Contact writer Jim Wallace at 348-4819.