Jack Walker Published

Preservationists Declare Historic Middleway ‘Endangered’ By Proposed Bottling Plant

A truck drives along a road, in front of a blue wooden house. On the other side of the street, three people stand in rain gear and look toward the truck.
The Middleway Conservancy Association leads a historic tour of Middleway, an eighteenth-century village in Jefferson County, on Jan. 31. The tour is briefly interrupted by truck traffic.
Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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Buildings along the streets of Middleway, a village in southern Jefferson County, date back to the late eighteenth century. But preservationists say a recent bottling plant proposal could place its historic integrity at risk.

The Preservation Alliance of West Virginia (PAWV) added the Middleway Historic District to its West Virginia Endangered Properties List on Jan. 28. The district has been included in the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.

The new status comes after Sidewinder Enterprises proposed to construct the Mountain Pure Water Bottling Facility atop a former Middleway manufacturing site in November. The project proposal has met an outpouring of community pushback over environmental, traffic and historic preservation concerns among residents.

Established in 1999, PAWV’s list is modeled after a country-wide endangered properties list from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, according to the PAWV website. The list aims “to bring attention to  significant historic places in [West Virginia] communities that are in danger of being lost and to find solutions,” the website reads.

PAWV Executive Director Danielle Parker shared news of the district’s new status during a community forum in Middleway’s Grace Episcopal Church on Friday. She told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that the current Mountain Pure plan is “threatening the longevity” of the village.

“Middleway is a very rare, historic treasure, not only for the state but the entire nation,” Parker said. “It has survived almost three centuries of growth and decline.”

PAWV has expressed specific concerns over the scale of the project, as outlined in a Jan. 28 press release.

A woman in a red turtleneck stands at a podium in a church and speaks into a microphone. Members of the audience look at her, listening.
Danielle Parker, executive director of the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia, delivers remarks at a Jan. 31 community forum in Middleway’s Grace Episcopal Church.

Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting

As currently proposed, the project would extract more than 1 million gallons of water from a local aquifer per day, install a pipeline beneath the center of the historic district and expand on-site parking for tractor trailers, requiring large vehicles to travel through the narrow village street, the press release said.

“The additional heavy truck traffic on our narrow historic roads could cause significant damage to the stone-stacked foundations and increase the risk of collision as the streets are not wide enough to accommodate semi-trucks,” said Jessie Norris, president of the Middleway Conservancy Association, in the press release.

In an email statement provided through a media representative, Sean Masterson, a partner for Mountain Pure, denied that the project would have a detrimental impact on the local community, pointing to the previous usage of the manufacturing site by other companies.

“3M and Kodak operated successfully with employee and distribution traffic traveling directly through Middleway daily,” he wrote.

Masterson added that a traffic study for the project was approved by the West Virginia Department of Highways. “The DOH understands the roads, routes and historical nature of the community and knew all of this prior to the approval of the aforementioned study,” he wrote.

Norris also serves as an organizer for Protect Middleway, a local grassroots activist group opposing the Mountain Pure project. In the PAWV press release, she expressed concern that construction on the manufacturing site could also cause the spread of toxic chemicals into the village’s water supply, as a plume of chemicals was reported beneath the plant in a 2018 geological survey. Project representatives for Mountain Pure have previously denied the claim that these chemicals could spread.

“The challenges facing Middleway undeniably warrant its inclusion on the endangered properties list,” Norris said. “The scale and design of this proposed plant and the pipeline will cause irreparable damage to our historic village.”

A sign along a town street reads "Say No to Mountain Pure" in blue block text. It sits beside a stone walkway and a small shrub.
Numerous residents of Middleway have placed signs opposing the Mountain Pure Water Bottling Facility proposal outside of their houses.

Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Parker said that inclusion in the endangered properties list begins with a public nomination process, where community members can recommend sites for consideration. PAWV’s board then reviews submissions, votes on which properties to include and does publicity work to encourage its protection, she said.

Parker said she has held her role for about 13 years, but rarely seen the amount of community involvement in a historic preservation effort that she witnessed during Friday’s forum in Middleway.

“I am overwhelmed, honestly, with the turnout,” she said. “There have been very few places [where] we’ve seen such a groundswell of citizen support to save a historic site like we’re seeing here.”

The future of the Mountain Pure project is still unclear, but its proposal has faced setbacks in the past. The Jefferson County Planning Commission declared its initial concept plan incomplete in November. A circuit court judge postponed review of Sidewinder’s revised plan in December to give members of the public more time to review the proposal.

But the project proposal will return to the desks of county planning commissioners this month. The commission is scheduled to consider the revised application during its regular meeting Feb. 11 at 7 p.m., to be held in the Jefferson High School auditorium.

At Friday’s community forum, organizers with Protect Middleway urged attendees to provide comments during the meeting, and to write to elected officials regarding their concerns over the project.

Parker said she feels the amount of public engagement in Jefferson County could protect the long-term security of Middleway’s historic downtown.

“That is very encouraging,” Parker said. “We feel that public opinion can sway the future of a situation.”