ELKINS, W.Va. (WBOY) – Many departments in the City of Elkins, including the wastewater department, officially expanded their use of Geographic Information System (GIS) data in 2023, which makes it easier to locate and fix any issues that may arise.
The GIS is able to be used by all the different city departments and officials have said that it will significantly cut down the time of identifying an issue and fixing it.
“The satellite image is reading the longitude, latitudes, depth and elevations and it will take the data stored on our field maps program after that storage and that data is in there I can go back into the maps and I can look to see exactly where this manhole is,” Whitney Hymes, the Wastewater Chief Operator, said.
On its website, the City of Elkins has an interactive parcel map that can tell you the acreage of a lot, who owns it and if it’s zoned for residential or commercial. The map can be accessed here.
“So if there is any kind of broken pipe or burst pipe or if the city has to get in instead of again manually having to go in and look through paperwork and try to guess or figure out where those pipes lay we will know exactly where from the data that we are able to get from this information,” Jeremy Deighan, City of Elkins Communications Specialist, said.
The system was able to be purchased through ARPA funding.
