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Airport lacks money for back sewer bills
By ED RUNYAN
VIENNA
The Youngstown- Warren Regional Airport is more than a year behind on its sewer payments to the Trumbull County sanitary engineer’s office and facing the possibility of having an additional, separate sewer bill in several years.
At the meeting of the Western Reserve Port Authority on Wednesday, board members were curious to know what the cost will be when the county completes the portion of the Squaw Creek Interceptor sewer project, running north on state Route 193 from Liberty Township into Vienna Township and past the airport.
Board member Richard Musick noted that some sewer projects cost around $100 per front-foot, and the airport has about 5,280 feet of frontage, for roughly $528,000.
Board member Don Hanni III said he wonders where the money would come from to pay that assessment, but no one seemed to have an answer.
Rex Fee, executive director of the sanitary engineer’s office, said the airport is about $35,000 to $36,000 behind on its monthly sewer bills because none have been paid since March 2009.
Fee said the county has been flexible with the airport because “It’s an important fixture in the community,” and his department is aware that the airport is having financial difficulties.
In July 2009, airport officials said they had laid off a couple of employees earlier in the year and were still facing the possibility of running out of money by the end of the year.
The airport did end the year in the black but has continued to seek additional money from commissioners from both counties.
Most of the airport’s operating revenue comes from hotel/motel taxes from Trumbull and Mahoning counties.
Fee said he is hoping to have a meeting with airport officials and the Trumbull County commissioners to work out a payment plan to get the airport’s payments current.
The airport’s bill is higher than it should be, Fee said, because storm water is infiltrating the sewers because of the age and deterioration of the system.
Meanwhile, Fee said the county is likely to construct a sewer line in front of the airport within about four to five years, but it’s impossible to say what the cost to the airport will be because it is not known how much grant money will be available.
Some years ago, the airport was allowed to connect to a sewer line that dumps sewage into the Mosquito Creek Treatment Plant in Howland even though the airport is part of a stormwater basin that drains toward Girard.
When the airport was given sewers, it was done with the understanding that if sewers became available along Route 193, the airport would have to tie into them, Fee said.