ANNOUNCEMENT — Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced $3.4 million in grants for water and sewer projects during a visit to the Public Safety Building in Fairmont on Thursday afternoon. -- Jim Bissett

FAIRMONT — Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced a $3.4 million outlay in grants for water and sewer projects in Marion County and across the region Thursday afternoon.

In the process, though, he also had to address questions about the earlier sale of four state-run health care facilities, plus the state’s new partnership with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Effort – which prompted protesters to gather in front of the Public Safety Building in Fairmont, where he made his remarks.

State money, meanwhile, is arriving by way of the West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council for the water and sewer work.

The Greater Paw Paw Public District in Baxter, Marion County, is one of the recipients and will receive $500,000, which it will use to upgrade its system for 157 customers down the line.

Other grants were awarded to similar projects in Harrison, Kanawha and Ritchie counties.

West Virginia’s mainly rural communities are served by treatment facilities that are mostly aging and in ill-repair.

Don’t invest, he said, and watch as your hopes for your community simply circle the drain.

“We’re never really going to grow as rapidly as we want as an economy if we don’t have the infrastructure basics,” Morrisey said.

End-of-life care is a fundamental basic, also, he said — which is why he signed the papers for the sale of four long-term health facilities in the state earlier this week, including Fairmont’s John Manchin Sr. Health Care Center.

The sale also took in Hopemont Hospital in Terra Alta, Jackie Withrow Hospital in Beckley and Lakin Hospital in West Columbia, Mason County, all operating at a combined $6 million loss annually.

Morrisey said he had toured all four hospitals during his time as state attorney general and said patient care was the catalyst of the $60 million sale to Marx Development Group, a New York City real estate development firm.

“Quite frankly, the government is not very good about managing or micro-managing the health care needs of people,” he said.

The state, though, has signed on federally with people-management of a decidedly different kind.

Morrisey on Wednesday inked a pact with ICE that allows West Virginia State Police, the state National Guard and state Division of Corrections officers to perform certain immigration control operations.

West Virginia doesn’t have an undocumented immigrant problem, he said.

Rather, the governor said, it has a fentanyl problem, the powerful narcotic — 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine — that keeps filtering in. Thousands of West Virginians had died from fentanyl overdoses in recent years.

“I can promise you, we’ve been blitzed,” Morrisey said of the drug trafficking.

Outside in the parking lot, though, another group of people were worried about local authorities interacting with ICE.

“They’re going to act like state-sanctioned secret police,” local organizer Warren Hilsbos said.