Questions on waste plant draw dozens to Southington hearing

By Ed Runyan

SOUTHINGTON — The school district will construct a waste-treatment plant to serve the new K-12 school building being planned on state Route 534 south of U.S. Route 422 if it can get approval from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Dozens of Southington residents showed up Monday night at Southington Christian Church to ask questions about the plant, which would cost about $700,000 and treat waste from the school and discharge it into Eagle Creek.

Erm Gomes, with the Ohio EPA’s northeast regional office in Twinsburg, said the plant at 2482 state Route 534 would serve about 700 students and 100 staff members.

It would be similar to the plant serving the current building on state Route 305 and would not result in drastic changes in the amount of water flowing into the creek. It would produce about 1 percent of the water in the creek, Gomes said.

After the hearing, Gomes said the EPA decided to conduct the hearing because of much public interest in the project, specifically a petition opposing it.

Southington resident Robert Wolf said one of the biggest reasons for opposing the plant is the deception of the school board when it asked Southington residents in February 2007 to approve a bond issue to fund the local portion of the new school. The Ohio School Facivlities Commission is providing 72 percent of the funding.

“When we approved the levy, there was no discussion of moving the school,” Wolf said. “Building the school down there would not have been a problem if they would have been up front.”

Wolf said he thinks the bond issue was placed on the ballot during a special election in February to bypass the township’s large senior-citizen population, many of whom were in the South during at the time of the election.

Al Haberstroh, who was a school board member when the levy was approved, said the school board has no choice but to build the school on the Route 534 site.

Running a water line to the current site would have increased the cost of the building by $1 million to $2 million, Haberstroh said. The new site has some of the best water in the township, Haberstroh said.

Charlotte Hammar, environmental specialist with the EPA’s Divison of Drinking and Ground Waters, said the current school and a few other buildings nearby are “limping along” with its current well, in which arsenic has been detected.

She said the Route 534 site has an adequate amount of water, but it hasn’t been approved yet, and she doesn’t know yet about the quality of the water.

School board member Melanie Wolke said opposition to the Route 534 site is delaying construction and increasing costs.

Gomes said it will take at least two months before the OEPA decides whether to approve the new treatment system.

Patricia Anderson, school board president, said the board is ready to advertise for bids to build the $23 million school as soon as it receives EPA approval of the waste-treatment system.

Comments on the project can still be written to the Ohio EPA, Division of Surface Water, Attn. Permits Processing Unit, P.O. Box 1049, Columbus, OH 43216-1049, until April 13.

Those attending the meeting asked a number of questions, but there were no public comments offered during the public-hearing portion of the meeting.

More information can be obtained by calling Gomes at (330) 963-1196.

runyan@vindy.com