MVSD meeds $7.3M to improve system

The filters are no longer useful, the MVSD chief engineer says.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning Valley Sanitary District officials told city council that a $7.3 million project will significantly improve its operations.
MVSD Chief Engineer Thomas Holloway told council Wednesday that a filter improvement project is 20 percent to 25 percent complete.
The MVSD is upgrading 16 filters used at the water plant, as well as repairing the building that houses the filters and upgrading the filters' electrical controls, Holloway said.
"Their useful life is over," he said.
Ten of the filters were installed at the MVSD during the early 1930s, when the plant opened, and the other six were added during an upgrade in the early 1950s. The filters are supposed to last 25 to 50 years, but some are 75 years old, Holloway said.
Three projects
The filters are encrusted with sand and particles cleaned from the water, he said.
The MVSD will also move ahead this month with an evaluation of a 1.5-million-gallon water tower in Stevens Park in Niles, Holloway said. The tank, built in the 1930s, will either be replaced or improved. The district will renovate the roof at its chemical building. Those two projects should cost about $2.7 million in total, Holloway said.
The three projects should be finished by late next year.
The money for the three projects comes from 3.5-percent interest loans from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's revolving loan account, and paid by the MVSD from water rate increases to its member cities of Youngstown and Niles, Holloway said.
Climbing rates
The MVSD's rates to the two cities went from 72.244 cents per 1,000 gallons in early 1994 to 92.8 cents beginning July 1, and then to 98.9 cents on July 1, 2006.
The MVSD sells water from Meander Reservoir in bulk amounts to Youngstown and Niles, as well as to the village of McDonald.
The two cities resell the water to its residents and those who live in other nearby communities. About 300,000 residents in Mahoning and Trumbull counties get their water from the MVSD.
Holloway and MVSD member Harry Johnson outlined the current projects, and proposed future ones, to city council Wednesday.
Not approved yet
In the future, the district wants to rehabilitate its six settling basins that remove large particles from the water and add two other basins, buy new equipment to improve how it removes sludge from water and make improvements to remove calcium carbonate buildup on its water valves.
Those three projects haven't received approval by the MVSD's two-member court of jurisdiction. Approval from the two judges is needed to borrow money for improvement work at the district.
All of the projects were part of a planned $100 million project started in the early 1990s.
About half of the work was completed, but the rest was put on hold after a special state audit in 1997 called for about $2.7 million in findings for recovery from MVSD officials and vendors. Only a few hundred thousand dollars have been paid to date. Civil lawsuits filed by the state attorney general's office against two former MVSD directors and the general contractor on the project were thrown out of court.
skolnick@vindy.com