WARREN TOWNSHIP Funding for waterline is just about in place
The total project will cost around $1.35 million.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- For as long as Ken Schick has been township fire chief, neighborhood residents have come to get their drinking water from a spigot outside the station house door.
"They are lining up out there all day long, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Schick, chief for the past six years. He estimates as many as 15 to 20 people a day drive to the station to fill jugs.
For many residents in this part of Warren Township just north of the Mahoning River, the Meadowbrook Drive fire station is an oasis in a desert of bad water.
In December, the Trumbull County Health Department tested samples from 19 area wells. Coliform bacteria, which come from sewage, were found in nine. One contained E. coli, said Alan Knapp, grants coordinator for Trumbull County Planning Commission.
The fire department gets its water from a line on the city water system.
The drought may end soon. The county has nearly pieced together funding to lay four miles of waterline to 218 homes on Meadowbrook Drive and Turner and Pendleton roads, a project that will cost $1.35 million.
Loan approved: The planning commission was informed Tuesday that an application to the Ohio Public Works Commission for a $200,000 grant and $200,000 loan for the project had been approved. County commissioners have committed $350,000 from the community development block grant program.
Now, all that they are waiting on is a $600,000 competitive CDB grant.
The earliest Knapp said it could be awarded is July. "We expect it to be funded," Knapp said. "We are going ahead with the project."
If everything falls into place, work on the waterlines could begin next spring or summer, he said. An engineer has been hired.
Plans are also in the works to bring water to areas further north and west of Meadowbrook and to bring septic sewers to the entire area, Knapp said.
The cost to homeowners in the Meadowbrook area will be for their individual connections and the line from each home to the street -- about $2,000 each, Knapp said.
"A lot of people do want the water real bad up here," said Judith Ritter, who has lived on Meadowbrook for the past 10 years.
But not her.
"I was raised on well water, and I like well water," she said.
siff@vindy.com