radioNOVO News for Parkersburg, WV 08-11-26

Good morning.State lawmakers are raising alarm over skyrocketing costs for West Virginia’s Department of Human Services data system, calling it a “runaway train”. A recent performance audit revealed over sixty-eight million dollars in potential savings, but officials warn full implementation could take years. The state has paid software firm Optum more than four hundred million dollars since twenty-seventeen to manage the system, which currently relies on an outdated forty-year-old mainframe costing over seven million dollars annually.In local government news, Parkersburg City Council is set to vote Tuesday on authorizing a twenty-five-point-seven-million-dollar water filtration overhaul. The project will install a new carbon filtration system for the Parkersburg Utility Board to remove forever chemicals like C-Eight from the municipal drinking water—with city officials promising no rate increases for residents.And federal Individual Assistance has officially been approved for residents in Pleasants and Ritchie counties recovering from severe storms and tornadoes that struck the region in late July.For more news, download the radioNOVO app. I’m Codi Gaboff, radioNOVO News, a service of Seven Mountains Media.