First phase of sewer project gets under way

By Ed Runyan

Trumbull is the busiest county in Ohio for sewer projects, a county official said.

WARREN — Dirt started to turn Thursday for the first phase of the Little Squaw Creek sewer project in Liberty, which will be followed next week by the start of the first phase of a project in the Scott Street area of Newton Township.

The Little Squaw Creek project will provide sewers along state Route 193, heading north from the Tibbetts Wick intersection to just south of Crews Hood Road near the northern Liberty Township line. Construction is likely to be complete in March.

The project involves construction of 6,000 feet of 18-inch sanitary sewer lines and 400 feet of 21-inch sewer line. It will serve about 28 customers in a mostly rural area.

It will cost about $1.3 million, of which $450,000 came from a $174,000 grant from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and $174,000 from a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Later phases of the project will take sewer lines past the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport and as far north as just south of King Graves Road in Vienna Township, said Rex Fee, executive director of the Trumbull County sanitary engineer’s office.

The project will eliminate the need for as many as 11 or 12 sewage processing plants known as “package plants,” including ones used at Mathews High School in Vienna and at three mobile home parks and some restaurants. All five phases of the project are likely to cost $8.2 million.

Patrick Ungaro, Liberty Township administrator, called the project the biggest development project for Liberty in the past decade.

The first phase of the Scott Street sanitary sewer project in Newton Township, just south of Newton Falls, is expected to begin construction next week. The $2.4 million project in a low- to moderate-income neighborhood is likely to be complete in May.

The first phase will serve 61 customers on West River Road from Eckman Avenue to the Mahoning River, Eckman Avenue, Windsor Street, Chestnut Street, Broadway Avenue, Cleveland Avenue, Woodland Avenue, Niles Avenue and Canal Street from Niles Avenue to Taylor Avenue.

One or two additional phases will provide sewers to the rest of the neighborhood, which was deemed an “unsewered area of concern” by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

The project relies heavily on grant money, with Ohio Community Development Block Grants of $600,000 and $300,000, an Ohio Public Works grant of $980,000 and an Ohio EPA loan of $520,000 being provided for the project.

The two projects are among dozens in progress around Trumbull County, making it the busiest county in the state in terms of sewer projects being built, Fee said.

The office is working on 12 to 13 others that are close to construction or are already under construction, Fee said.

They include projects in Champion, Bazetta, Brookfield and elsewhere.

In the past two years, the office has completed $20 million in sewer projects with more than 1,500 homes and 220 mobile homes receiving sewers since 2002, Fee said.

runyan@vindy.com