SPRINGFIELD TWP. Trustee: Funding offer still stands

The township is trying to increase its revenue from the landfill, a trustee said.
By MARY GRZEBIENIAK
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
NEW SPRINGFIELD -- An offer by Waste Management to provide Springfield Township with $600,000 for the Petersburg sewer project is "still on the table," despite earlier comments by one Springfield Township trustee, Trustee Shirley Heck says.
The trustees have held preliminary talks on a host communities agreement with representatives from the Waste Management landfill, located in the township. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency encourages host communities agreements between landfills and the communities where they are located. Many communities, such as Poland Township, already have one.
No new talks are scheduled, but they are not at a stalemate, as Trustee Reed Metzka stated earlier this month, Heck said.
Trustees simply did not want to rush into signing an agreement with the landfill and decided to seek other sources for the $600,000 match for a $450,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant in order to meet a March 1 application deadline.
If no other source for the local match was found, the match money would have to be assessed from the 220 low-to-moderate-income households that would be served by the sewer line, Heck said.
Well contamination
Petersburg is in desperate need of a sanitary sewer because 30 percent of its water wells are contaminated by fecal coliform bacteria. The $2.7 million project is set to start in July.
So at the meeting earlier this month, trustees agreed to ask Mahoning County Solid Waste to consider providing the $600,000 match. In case the answer is no, they also agreed to seek a loan to provide the match.
Solid Waste, which has already committed $300,000 to the Petersburg project, has not yet responded to the township's request for the additional $600,000.
Trustees said they thought it was reasonable to request the additional money from the waste district because it receives $1.50 per ton for local waste dumped at the landfill and $3 per ton for waste from other parts of the state. That amounted to $627,000 last year.
Talks to continue
Heck said talks on the agreement will continue with Waste Management, but more time is needed to get an agreement both sides can live with. She emphasized the talks are still in an early stage; the township has not yet presented any proposal to the landfill officials.
She added that the township would like to negotiate a $1 per ton tipping fee for waste dumped at the landfill. A tipping fee of 25 cents per ton is now given to the township as a matter of state law to compensate it for increased traffic and other problems associated with landfills. However, the township could negotiate a higher figure under a host communities agreement.
If the landfill would agree to $1 per ton, the township would receive about $324,000 per year instead of the $81,000 it gets now.
In exchange for whatever they would offer the township under the agreement, Heck said, the landfill officials have indicated they want the township to agree not to object to expansion of the waste mound. Trustees have not indicated whether they would agree to either of these.
Heck said, "The landfill is here. It's not going away. We have to work with them."