PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WCHS) — Wood County’s Parkersburg is the big town in West Virginia when it comes to alcohol and drug rehabilitation treatment beds.

The city has 281 of them. Some are in courthouse and hospital-sized buildings. It has more than Kanawha County and Charleston, the state's biggest city.

No other county has more than 150 beds. Many have none. Wood County delegates and mayors contend it's left the Parkersburg area with a huge homeless problem, and they pushed for legislative help and got it in the form of a 250-bed cap per county or House Bill 3337.

Wood, the only county now over 250 beds, is frozen and would be grandfathered in at 281. Del. Scott Heckert, R-Wood, led the effort.

“Well, it's not that we don't want to help people, but it's taken over our city and it's hurt us. And we just had to do something to stop it and get things under control,” Heckert said.

Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce said it is not unreasonable for his city to help treat Mid-Ohio Valley residents, but patients from 26 other states, who sometimes dropped in and added to homeless problems, were too much.

“And they're experiencing homelessness and the behaviors are problematic," Joyce said.

All five Wood GOP delegates voted for the cap that cleared the House last week.

The final version of the bill was even more restrictive on new substance abuse treatment beds than the original version of the measure. Critics said that 250-bed limit was arbitrary and had no real basis in terms of need. Crime and eyesore concerns helped push it through.

Heckert said the issue has “cost the county for cleaning up messes, for cleaning up homeless camps."

The action comes as money from various opioid crisis settlements with makers, distributors and drug stores are about to become available for treatment projects.

The governor's office indicated it has not yet received the bill from the 60-day session that ended Saturday.