Sewer project awaits funding

By Ed Runyan

The county promised the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency it would provide sewers to Kinsman Center by 2015.

WARREN — An $8 million to $10 million sewer project serving Kinsman and nearby Farmdale could start construction as early as next fall if an expected federal grant and a loan are approved.

Rex Fee, executive director of the Trumbull County Sanitary Engineer’s Department, said an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Rural Development advised him that a grant paying 75 percent of the project and a low-interest loan paying the other 25 percent are likely to be approved.

The county plans to submit a grant application to the USDA within the next couple of weeks.

Engineering work for the project should take six to eight months to complete, and the project could be put out to bid and started by fall or winter of 2010, Fee said.

The grant would pay 75 percent of the project, and the approximately 350 to 375 residential and commercial property owners getting the sewers in the Kinsman Center and Farmdale areas would pay the other 25 percent, Fee said.

That cost is estimated to be $25 to $30 per month for 40 years per property owner. On top of that would be the user’s monthly usage charges.

This would be the second phase of a sewer project in Kinsman that involved an upgrade to the sewage plant at the former Kraft dairy plant in Kinsman and installation of 2,000 feet of sewer lines on Burnett East Road near the plant in 2008.

The first phase was made possible by a $340,000 USDA. grant, $340,000 from a county loan fund and $111,000 from an agreement with the former owner of the treatment plant.

The second phase will involve another expansion of the treatment plant, plus construction of pump stations and sewer lines, Fee said.

The Kinsman area is one of several places around Trumbull County identified as “unsewered areas of concern” by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency — areas the county promised in a legal document called a consent decree to provide sewers so that sewage discharges into the environment could be eliminated.

The county agreed to provide sewers to the Kinsman area by 2015, Fee said.

The Kinsman-Farmdale area qualifies for money from the USDA because of the percentage of residents there who are of low to moderate income, Fee said.

Paul Heltzel, Trumbull County commissioner, said the Kinsman project will be among the biggest sewer projects in the county’s history. The USDA grant will allow the project to be complete several years before the deadline.

“Its got to be done. It’s just a matter of when,” he said.

runyan@vindy.com